IDG Contributor Network: The CVS go-it-alone app suffers from the pharma payment pain

When CVS last week (Aug. 11) rolled out its in-store mobile payment app, it was the latest example of the front-loading approach to mobile payments. That's where you let shoppers do as much as possible within the payment app long before they get to the top of the checkout line. That way, what they perceive as the payment part can be as quick and painless as possible. Good move, CVS.

But the CVS app couldn't fully front-load the payment process due to the complicated nature of pharmacies. For example, there are payment options that can only be used in pharmacy — such as a federal health savings account (HSA) debit — but only for a very limited number of items. That means that shoppers have to make that time-consuming choice standing in front of the POS associate, defeating a lot of the convenience that CVS has worked so hard to achieve.

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