On the cards

Ben Pfisterer is the Australian country manager for Square, the retail payments tech developer. After previous roles working in business development, strategy and innovation at NAB and Visa, he started at Square in 2014 and was part of its Australian launch in early 2016.

Here he speaks with Marketing about changes in bricks and mortar retail, the tech developments that are letting small businesses access the information big businesses have had for decades, and what new payment technologies will mean for the future of cash.

Marketing: Today much of the discussion around retail and consumption centres on online trends. What have been some of the biggest changes in the physical retail space?

Ben Pfisterer: Bricks and mortar has been going through significant changes. It probably started about nine years ago. That was when the [current] most commonly accepted form of payment – although at that time it was still cash – card, was starting to grow in utilisation. Back then and obviously for many years before that, magstripe technology was the predominant card type. It worked really well when it was a minority type of transaction, but as