The tech landscape is awash with new buzzwords which are primed to change our industry.

Wearable tech will give us new data sets to anticipate consumer behaviour. ‘The internet of things’ will make life connected for people, and beacons will enable us to tailor the instore experience to each consumer.

The most useful and immediate, however, will be frictionless, easy, and eliminate the sound of change in your pocket.

2015 will be the year of mobile payments.

Apple’s mobile payments solution, Apple Pay, is only available in the US at the moment, but it will spread quickly as consumers and retailers alike rush to implement it.

“Apple Pay launched just a few weeks ago and already it’s really starting to take off,” John Collision, president of payments firm, Stripe, told the audience at Web Summit in Dublin earlier this month.

“Already we’re starting to see businesses scramble to support this,” Collision said.

Yet don’t be fooled into seeing mobile payments as a mere technological upgrade.

Technology ages very quickly – today’s innovation is tomorrow’s legacy problem. In today’s networked world, a company’s philosophy matters more than high tech gadgets.

‘Omnichannel’ is the buzz word of the moment among retailers, but for consumers this way of working is already old hat.

They demand a single operation across all channels – an approach we call, ‘total retail’.

Mobile payments is only one aspect of total retail, but it is a critical one for retailers to appease their ever more demanding customers.

Sarah Quinlan, senior VP and group head of market insights for MasterCard, who collaborated with Apple on Apple Pay, summed up the approach at World Retail Congress 2014.

As she said: “It really must be seamless.”

For more on the future of retail, book a place at The Future Laboratory Retail Futures Forum in partnership with QIC at the Melbourne Museum on Thursday February 5, 2015.

Or, to find out more, please email Jen Sherrin, or call on +61 438 220 243