Target Pay's holiday launch is good for shoppers, bad for retail

Target will ring in this year's holiday season with its official mobile payment system, what has been referred to as Target Pay, though it doesn't officially have that name yet. The good parts: It's potentially faster than most mobile payment options, and it is available in far more phones than Apple Pay. The bad part: Because it's only usable with one retailer, it will be less likely to become a habit with shoppers.

One element, though, bodes especially well for Target. Because its behavior mimics an existing popular Target program — a discount effort called Cartwheel — cashiers will not have much of a learning curve, which is a problem that almost every other mobile payment system had to initially overcome.

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