Yeah, welcome back to Cheddar news. Everyone.
Let's talk about the future of retail. It's a
topic that the payments platform square is exploring. The
company co founded by now, former twitter Ceo Jack
Dorsey releasing its second annual future of retail report.
The survey includes responses from 1000 retail customers and 500
retail owners to see what businesses can expect in the
year ahead and beyond. So here to break down
the findings is the head of retail at Square Roshan
Jinja. I Russian, thank you so much for
coming on the show, your second annual report.
What are the big takeaways? Yeah, thanks for
having me Chris and happy to be here. Um
, there's a number of takeaways and as you'd imagine
, and how we've all heard during pandemic, um
, there's been just this massive shift online and uh
, you know, I think we're seeing about 47%
of retailers, you know, extending all the way
into these new Omni channel workflows. Right? So
47% of them offer buy online pick up in store
. We have the majority. In fact approaching 60%
of retailers revenue is coming from online sales, right
? And that's inclusive of social channels as well.
Um, and so, you know, really,
I think what they're all finding is that online is
um, here to stay at least for the extended
period. Um, and consumers are getting used to
it. Um, there's a lot of, uh
, you know, flows that they're taking for granted
that they're expecting to see in terms of the convenience
and in terms of the flexibility that omni channel can
offer, you can now initiate and conclude your transaction
whether you're buying or returning or exchanging anywhere that can
start online or offline and kind of transit all of
those things. What are the takeaways for your company
square? Soon to change its name to block officially
? As of this week, end of this week
, I do believe on friday. But what are
you doing to change your business model from a retail
perspective in the year ahead? Yeah, it's a
great question. Um, you know, as you
, as you may know, uh, Square really
got its start in brick and mortar. And so
a lot of our D. N. A.
Is and helping sellers manage their physical spaces. Um
, and one of the things that's been a hallmark
for sellers that historically have gravitated towards Square is um
just this really outstanding connection with its customers with their
communities. Uh, and you know, some of
the things we're trying to do is help them embrace
that for their online sellers as well. Right?
So take their successful presence in brick and mortar and
extend that into whether they're selling on Tiktok or Youtube
and and you know, really using our power of
our platform where you can express all of the items
that you have for sale and kind of your brand
in a meaningful way. Make that easy for them
to just sort of, you know, with the
click of a button, push those things out to
whether it's a social platform on online platform to sell
and to meet their customers wherever they are. Those
are the things that we have been leading into on
the retail side. So I do see in this
report to the labor shortage and automation addressed head on
, 72% of retailers use or plan to use automation
, A 31% worry about attracting and retaining staff.
How is square, soon to be block providing the
technology necessary for these retailers to incorporate automation so that
the issues from the labor shortages are eased a bit
. Yeah, that's a great question. Kristen one
that, you know, is near and dear to
my heart as an engineer by training. I I
loved the ways that we can find to help automate
things. Uh and you know, automation sometimes was
looked at really skeptically. I think a lot of
folks think it's like, you know, the robot's
coming for our jobs. But really what we're talking
about here is using the data that you have in
this system um to inform what you might I want
to do next. Right? So maybe you've got
goods that aren't selling. Super. Well, we
have a system that can suggest to you that it
might be time to run a discount or a targeted
campaign or maybe it's time to reorder something before you
run out of stock because it's so critical to remain
, you know, to keep on inventory for things
that are moving really well? So as we lean
into these opportunities to unlock the data that sellers are
entrusting into our system. Uh just there's a ton
of opportunity for automation is and for ways to kind
of give back time and honestly to alleviate some of
those labor shortage type issues, right? There's never
going to be a replacement for having in fact,
a lot of consumers want to be able to have
a lot of interaction with people when they come into
a store. But if we can get back more
time to work with your customer as opposed to the
care and feeding of your business and you know,
the running of your inventory, then that's something we'd
love to do. There's a section in this report
to titled more Ways to pay. And I know
a lot of your consumers have been interested in Cryptocurrency
wondering about the ability to use crypto to pay in
the future. Will we see a Bitcoin hardware wallet
coming in the new year? Uh So certainly,
you know what we have always been striving to do
is to enable our sellers to always make their sales
right? And so, you know, generally what
that means is whatever consumers are looking to move to
and to embrace in terms of payment technology, we're
always looking to enable on behalf of our sellers in
terms of the specific timeframes for new forms of payment
. I don't actually have those off the top of
my head, but I would be happy to speak
more to the retail specific components here. What does
the retail data show in terms of what consumers will
demand in the new year? Yeah. You know
, a lot of the trends that we're seeing and
have seen during pandemic have been about working from home
. Uh, and some of the fastest growing sectors
sure enough have been around home improvement. Um,
you know, some of this is seasonal, but
we certainly have seen nurseries, outdoor sporting goods,
um, you know, really kind of moving in
terms of the rate of new businesses and the rate
of consumers. Um, and so I think some
of those trends are likely to persist. Uh you
know, we, we have new variants and new
surges and uh, you know, looking into the
new year, I would expect that some of this
pandemic, um, you know, the way that
the balance has shifted is likely to continue. I
did see in the report as well that it sounds
like shoppers, especially younger shoppers do prefer to use
these mobile form of payments or not to have to
carry around an actual physical card with them that they
feel a bit safer doing that during this pandemic.
What are the safety features that need to go along
with that erosion to make that a trustworthy retail experience
. Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate in that
um, at the technology layer, there's, there's
quite a few safeguards in place. Uh And Square
itself offers a lot of protections to sellers that oftentimes
are not uh you know, they're not as as
exposed or they're aware of. Um but in terms
of the safety that's kind of embedded, I would
say that, you know, certainly would like the
tap to pay solutions, whether it's, you know
, you're your credit card or your mobile phone,
um there's a lot of embedded safeguards there that make
it very difficult for folks to kind of steal information
, right? You can imagine that if you're paying
with a credit card over the phone and you're reading
your numbers out, um that's likely to be a
much less secure way because it might be ending up
on a slip of paper that's kind of left in
the wrong place. And so, you know,
I would actually make the claim that it's probably a
lot safer and more secure to use some of these
newer forms of Alright, Russian, Jr, head
of retail at Square, soon to be blocked as
of friday of this week. Thank you so much
Russian for coming on the show