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Dan R.D.

Half of UK population owns a smartphone | Technology | guardian.co.uk [31Oct11] - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-uk-population-owns-smartphone

1UE_NS growth europe

shared by Dan R.D. on 31 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Just under half of the UK population now owns a smartphone, and Google's mobile operating system Android is powering half of those those being sold – followed by RIM's BlackBerry models with 22.5% and Apple's iPhone at 18.5%.
  • The pace of smartphone sales is accelerating rapidly, too. In the 12 weeks to 2 October, they comprised just under 70% of mobile phones, according to new research from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
  • Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar's global consumer insight director, warned that the next year could see a lot of jockeying for customers.""Over the next six to 12 months, the current group of Android owners will be coming to the end of their contracts and looking for an upgrade," he said."Our data shows that when these consumers upgrade they tend to remain fairly loyal to Android itself – 62% buy another Android mobile – but considerably less so to the handset manufacturer."
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Mobile payments are on fire today, where will they be in 2015 (infographic) | VentureBe... - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...mobile-payments-2015-intuit

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 07 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • We just can’t give enough love to mobile payments as we watch the world move from cash to credit to cardless. Intuit is feeling the evolution too and created an infographic to explain just how much mobile payments are growing and where they’ll be in 2015.
  • The two biggest payment players last year were obviously credit and debit cards, with a small, but rising mobile payments only making up 5 percent of purchases executed. But important to note is that as credit, debit and other forms of payment increase, cash exchange decreases. People have long trusted plastic to deliver their currency, so why not trade in the plastic for airwaves? Well, according to Intuit, people will do just that. Cash is expected to drop to just over $1 trillion changing hands in 2015, and alternate payments jumping up considerably to $2.7 trillion, hugely surpassing cash as a trusted method of payment.
  • Also important to keep in mind is the proliferation of smartphones themselves. Smartphones have permeated over 40 percent of mobile users, but more interesting is the fact that this is mirrored in business owners. 37 percent of entrepreneurs also work through the smartphone, creating a level playing field for people wanting to buy and sell over the phone.
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  • Today, only one in four people are willing to whip out their iPhone or Android to buy goods. What’s to blame? Security concerns top the charts at 64 percent, but an underlying reason is that 46 percent of people just see their phones as devices to call or e-mail people. Perhaps people have not yet adopted the device as a utilitarian device, and instead use it only for its base functions, and perhaps entertainment.
Dan R.D.

Coming Soon to a Coffee Shop Near You: NFC-Powered Foursquare Check-ins [28Nov11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...nfc_foursquare_check-ins.php

3BT_NFC

shared by Dan R.D. on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • To enable NFC-powered check-ins, establishments need to display a sign or poster containing an NFC tag that points to their venue's Foursquare listing URL. Nokia's developer blog has some resources on getting started with NFC tags. Signs like this not only enable people to check-in with less effort, but can also provide a visual, real-world call to action. For non-power users of location services like Foursquare, it can be pretty easy to simply forget to check in to a restaurant or other local business. Having that sign hanging there can provide a mental trigger. Business owners can also use the opportunity to push promotions and deals, offering discounts or free products to the mayor or anybody else that checks in. Admittedly, the average person has no idea what NFC is right now. But it's almost universally predicted to reach mainstream adoption within a few years, quite possibly replacing our wallets and keys at some point in the future. NFC is already included on a number of Android-powered handsets and is rumored to be coming to the iPhone 5 next year.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Starbucks apps account for 26M mobile payments and $110M in card reloads | VentureBeat ... - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...starbucks-mobile-pay-stats

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The Starbucks brand may be synonymous with pricey lattes, but the coffee conglomerate has pushed a number of mobile initiatives in 2011 to make its name also stand for digital innovation.
  • New numbers released Monday suggest that the strategy is working.
  • Starbucks has now processed more than 26 million mobile payments since January, Adam Brotman, vice president and general manager of digital ventures at Starbucks, told VentureBeat.
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  • Add to that the fact that more than 6 million of those mobile transactions occurred during the past nine weeks — which is more than double the 3 million transactions the company saw in the first nine weeks post release — and the data shows a growing number of consumers are going wallet-free and opting instead to pay for their daily coffee runs with the Starbucks mobile app.
  • Starbucks mobile pay, a prominent feature of the company’s iPhone and Android applications, was released in the U.S. in January. Consumers can use the mobile app to load money on to a digital Starbucks Card and present a 2D barcode to pay-by-scan at the register at more than 9,000 locations. The program launched in Canada in November and will land in the U.K. in January 2012.
  • Of the $2.4 billion loaded on to Starbucks Cards in fiscal year 2011, $110 million was loaded onto cards via Starbucks mobile apps. The mobile figure equates to just under 5 percent of all reloads, but does highlight a shift in how customers engage with Starbucks cards. “Customers love the ease of [Starbucks card] reload and autoload on their apps,” Brotman said.
  • Mobile app users are also tapping the company’s e-gifting feature to send the electronic gift of Starbucks from their phones. E-gifting was added to the apps in June — it was previously available as a web-only feature — and now accounts for 10 percent of total e-gifting volume.
  • The company’s early successes on mobile have allowed it to experiment with apps like Starbucks Cup Magic, a one-off holiday application released in mid November that adds a layer of augmented reality to the in-store experience. An app user can point his device’s camera lens at a holiday character on Starbucks cups, coffee bags or in-store signage, and watch the character come to life. The app has been used in this capacity more than 450,000 times to date, Brotman said.
  • Starbucks also now has 3.6 million customers in its My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program, and 2 million members have reached the highest Gold level.
  • Altogether, the stats show that the company’s Starbucks Card, loyalty, payment, e-gifting and drink builder modules and programs are converging into a single, mobile experience that customers truly love, Brotman said.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How Mobile Payments Will Evolve In the Next Several Years - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/..._evolve_in_the_next_severa.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 27 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Mobile payment has become a mainstream tech topic in the last couple of years, mirroring the rise of smartphones and application stores. E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. The focus point of the buzz has been the evolution of near-field communications as related to smartphones. The thing is, nobody in the payments industry expects NFC to be a player in mobile payments for years, if ever. In that case, what does the mobile payments ecosystem look like in the short term?
  • The current mobile payments market centers around several cores: direct carrier billing, mobile wallets, online and offline sales, mobile credit card readers and application stores. During meetings with various mobile payments experts and executives at CTIA last week, the most uttered phrase was: "This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." Where are mobile payments going?
  • The Non-Promise of NFC OK, let us get one thing straight: NFC may never be a widely used form of payments. There are so many reasons why it will not be. Foremost, the logistics of NFC are a nightmare. The actual technology is probably ready. The infrastructure around the technology is not. There are too many competing interests coming from above the retail market that creating a universal NFC reader between smartphones and financial services is not going to happen anytime soon. The closest thing to a widely used system would be Mastercard's PayPass, but even as widespread as that is, it is no where near the type of market penetration that would create an inflection point for NFC to take off. Second, PayPass needs a software upgrade to offer any type of deals, something that will be important in the mobile payments world.
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  • The second half of the NFC conundrum is that there are a lot of hands reaching for the supposed pile of money that NFC payments will enable. Look at Google's announcement of the Wallet product. Or the ISIS partnership between Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Google is partnering with Mastercard, CitiBank, Sprint, FirstData, Verifone, VivoTech (the NFC partner), Hypercom, Ingenico and NXP (another NFC partner). All of these large companies are going to want a slice of the pie. Where does that leave the retailers? You know, the ones that are actually trying to make money with good and services? Sadly, on the outside of the circle. The carriers are the biggest culprits, wanting to take as much as 50% of transaction revenue because it is "going over their pipes." The financial services companies will be happy taking their normal rates in the 1.75% to 3% range as long as there is a promise that more people will pay electronically (read: sans cash). Between retailers, partners and infrastructure, NFC has years to go before it will be viable for all parties involved.
  • What will happen in this time frame? Think about the so-called "4G" technology WiMax. The technology is already becoming antiquated with LTE and all the major carriers are working on the next version after that. Sprint is keeping a hybrid of WiMax and LTE going forward but overall it is a tech that died before it even matured. NFC may be the same. What if there are massive leaps in quantum teleportation in the next several years? Does NFC become the WiMax of the payment world?
  • Maturation Of Direct Carrier Billing The "I do not see myself buying a fridge with this" line comes mostly from the direct carrier folks. Direct carrier billing is the perfect area for micro-payments and payments that stem from ease of use. Think of parking. If you could pay for your parking on the street with your phone, would that convenience be worth an extra couple of cents on the dollar to you? The direct to carrier ecosystem has evolved to the point where it actually makes sense for offline and online use. Zong (acquired by eBay for PayPal integration), PaymentOne and Boku are the leaders in this space. PaymentOne has processed $5 billion in mobile payments and lets users pay with their phone numbers, validating transactions via text. Zong allows that capability as well. Payment One's "One Care" features, announced last week at CTIA, makes direct to carrier billing safe and secure. Transparency is important in mobile commerce because consumers do not really trust their phones to handle their money quite yet. The most important aspect of direct to carrier billing now is that the revenue mechanism has been flipped. It used to be that merchants only got some 40% or less of payments while the carriers and partners took the rest. Even with high margin transactions, that is unacceptable. Today, direct to carrier billing provides the merchants with more than 80% of the revenue, sometimes nearly 95%.
  • The Dongle World: Smartphones As Credit Card Readers Square, VeriSign and Intuit are pushing hard into the dongle department. Jumio is doing the same thing, just without the dongle. There is not much to be said about the dongle world that we have not already touched on at ReadWriteWeb outside of the notion that it is bringing easy credit card readers to the mobile masses.
  • The dongle competitors are not worried about what is happening in the ecosytem because it does not really touch their core business. For instance, PayPal does not see NFC or dongles infringing on its business in any way, shape or form. As Laura Chambers, PayPal's head of mobile, said in a recent interview, "we are not worried about much in the ways of competition. There is a lot of white space in the industry for horizontal movement."
  • What Is PayPal Really Doing? In the interview with Chambers, the first question I asked was, "Why does it seem like PayPal has become a "me too" operator in mobile payments?" It is a fair question, even if Chambers balked to acknowledge that PayPal has been in "me too" mode for the last year or so. PayPal has ignored the dongle movement and NFC is not on its radar as a technology it feels it needs to integrate. "What is the difference between a tap versus a swipe?" Chambers asked. "We are working with what works in the current infrastructure ... We have sat down with consumers and merchants to work with them on what they want." PayPal is growing sideways because there is not a ton of room right now to grow vertically. PayPal will get into NFC solutions when the time is appropriate. Its strategy now is to create as much flexibility for consumers as possible through its mobile wallet program. PayPal's stance is data driven - the company can track when and what consumers buy from mobile phones and tablets. Hence, PayPal is focusing on the shopping end of the spectrum, as opposed to a pure payments play. "60% of people buy more and spend more on mobile," Chambers said. "But, we see that people are not really buying different things on mobile ... the No. 1 driver of growth in mobile payments is boredom." That fits in well with what PayPal sees as "couch commerce." They released a study recently saying that mobile shopping is going to boom this holiday season. As such, PayPal is ready to deploy an end-to-end solution for merchants and consumers to reward loyalty and provide deals and offers along with digital receipts. PayPal believes that it has a lot of room to grow in mobile through these types of horizontal movements. We are also seeing this on a non-mobile front with eBay partnering with Facebook and the Open Graph API and the new X.Commerce initiative that consolidates the PayPal, Zong, Magento, RedLaser and Milo technologies. The company is calling it an "open commerce ecosystem."
  • Future Of Mobile Payments This article is the first in a series of the trends in mobile payments that ReadWriteWeb will be working on in the next several months. There are a lot of questions and the answers are just beginning to emerge. Who are the winners in the space? Are retail shops in danger of "becoming expensive fronts for online shopping," as Chambers said in the interview? Does NFC really have potential to disrupt offline payments or is it just cool technology? These questions and more are what we will be tackling in the months to come.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal'​s Don Kingsborough: in-store payment is ours to lose - 0 views

gigaom.com/...-store-payment-is-ours-to-lose

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 14 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Don Kingsborough could have called it quits. The man who founded Worlds of Wonder Toys, famous for Teddy Ruxpin and helping lead the introduction of Nintendo in the U.S., and the former president of of consumer products at Atari, was just winding down his time last year at Blackhawk Network, a pre-paid card company that he had sold to supermarket Safeway. With his options expiring, he decided to sell and contemplated retirement.
  • But then PayPal came calling, and Kingsborough couldn’t resist the opportunity to make one more big stab at shaking up the retail world. Kingsborough joined PayPal in March 2011 as VP for retail and prepaid products, heading up PayPal’s efforts to launch an in-store payment system.
  • In his first extensive interview since joining PayPal, Kingsborough said he wasn’t just interested in extending his career; he saw a huge chance to fundamentally change the way people shopped in retail stores as digitalization moved payments beyond cash and credit. And he believes that PayPal is uniquely positioned to bring that vision to market.
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  • “I thought someone would be able to change the way people shop, but I didn’t think it would be a startup because this will happen quickly and you also need brands that people trust. And PayPal is one of them. It takes the combination of a trusted payment company and the cooperation with great brands that people trust to change how people shop. I thought I would be able to convince all the major retailers all around the world because I have had  relationships with them for 30 years,” Kingsborough said.
  • Even with the departure of PayPal’s president Scott Thompson, who is now Yahoo’s new CEO, PayPal hasn’t missed a beat and is executing on its vision, Kingsborough said.
  • Solving consumer and merchants needs Kingsborough came in and honed the in-store payment initiative, which was underway well before Kingborough arrived. He focused on appealing first to consumers and making it simple for them to grasp, before ensuring the merchants could be able to understand the value of the system. Then he went about getting the cooperation of merchants, criss-crossing the country to call upon retailers and payment infrastructure companies to get them on board. Along the way, he helped PayPal pick up necessary components like location-based service WHERE, whose CEO Walt Doyle was personally persuaded to sell by Kingsborough. The plan is now to start rolling out the payment system in the second quarter though the first U.S. trials have already begun with Home Depot.
  • Kingsborough said he was drawn to PayPal’s approach to payments because it was aimed at solving deep consumer and merchant needs. He said competitors who focus on near field communication and other alternative payment systems are too often preoccupied with the capabilities of their technology, but they’re not addressing the pressing needs of users.
  • “Competitors think they’ll solve how easy it is to pay at retail, but that’s not a consumer problem. Their problem is how do they become masters of shopping and use their money smartly and organize their efforts to shop online, in-store and on mobile,” said Kingsborough. “We have a holistic approach. We ask the consumers [what they] want to do. They want to save money, save time and feel important in stores.”
  • NFC: a feature, not a solution That’s partly why he thinks NFC in particular isn’t ready for prime time. He said it’s going to take a while for it to proliferate in stores and on handsets. But more fundamentally, it doesn’t make consumer’s lives better.
  • “Do I think NFC will work someday? Maybe. But to me, NFC is a feature, not a solution that solves problems. If your strategy is NFC today, you need a new strategy,” Kingsborough.
  • Google and Isis, the carrier consortium including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, are pushing hard on NFC and are angling to become the go-to mobile wallet for users, who will be able to pay at point-of-sale terminals with a tap of their phone. Many of the pieces for NFC fell into place for the technology in 2011, though there are still many hurdles ahead toward a broad rollout (subscription required) and mass consumer adoption.
  • PayPal’s approach bypasses many of the hardware constraints of NFC and pushes a two-pronged approach to in-store payments. Users can either use a PayPal Access card connected to their account, or more intriguingly, enter their phone number and PIN at a POS terminal and access their PayPal account. PayPal takes a user’s identification and turns it into a token, which is authenticated in the cloud, so no actual credit card numbers or financial data travels back and forth.
  • What it takes to win Kingsborough said the companies that win will be comprehensive and ubiquitous, allowing consumers to conduct transactions wherever they want to. By going with a software-based approach, PayPal can address about 8.2 million of the 10 million point of sale terminals with its payment system, without forcing retailers to buy new hardware. Then it’s up to PayPal to convince retailers to jump on board. It’s doing some critical work by signing deals with payment infrastructure companies like AJB Software Designs, which helps connect the point of sale terminals at many tier-one retailers to payment processors and financial institutions. Merchants that use AJB will have an easy path in enabling PayPal payments in store. PayPal is talking to other point of sale companies such as Verifone.
  • Merchants won’t just be getting a potentially cheaper alternative to credit cards. In PayPal’s vision, they’ll also be getting a way to push out offers to consumers, both in-store and nearby. Kingsborough said PayPal is working through its mobile app to address a variety of needs of merchants, from helping them manage online, mobile and in-store sales to improving loyalty and offering targeted discounts to users. Those additional tools will be rolled out over time in the next year or two. Google has outlined early plans to also provide coupons and offers to consumers using Google Offers in conjunction with Google Wallet.
  • Providing value But the other important winning determinant will be providing valuable, relevant and easy-to-use services to consumers, becoming the one mobile wallet they turn to, said Kingsborough. He said using tools like WHERE’s targeting and location technology will allow merchants to not just push out deals but deliver very context-aware content. For example, he said a clothes retailers might be able to message a nearby customer, letting them know they’ll earn $5 in their PayPal account that day if they buy jeans that they’ve purchased in the past. And, with the right permissions, the merchant may also be able to know the customer is with two friends and offer a group discount.
  • “It’s not just the capabilities of location-based services or understanding what a person just did; but it’s about being highly relevant to the person using the services,” Kingsborough said
  • He said in the battle to become the preferred digital wallet, PayPal will be the simplest for people to use, allowing people to link their credit, debit and loyalty cards, even potentially their drivers license. Just as people stick primarily to one browser, he said consumers will want to rely on primarily one wallet and he believes that PayPal will be that provider.
  • “Ours to lose” Kingsborough said it’s the whole offering that makes PayPal’s approach a winner. It’s a trusted name with more than 100 million users worldwide and it’s focused on providing value to both consumers and merchants with an easy path to ubiquity. “This is ours to lose,” he said. “I’m very confident about that. Otherwise, I’d be golfing right now in Hawaii.”
Dan R.D.

The semiconductor industry: Space invaders | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/21542402

5RFID_IOT Technology Growth Competition IoT

shared by Dan R.D. on 05 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The battle is not just about dividing up territories already occupied; it is also about finding new lands to conquer. Both firms are keen to stake claims on the largely uncolonised and still somewhat notional terrain known as the “internet of things”: the myriad processors in industrial machinery, consumer goods and infrastructure, ever more of which will communicate with each other and with distant computers. Cisco, a giant American maker of networking gear, estimates that by 2015 there may be almost 15 billion internet-connected devices, up from 7.5 billion in 2010. Whereas the market for more phones and other personal computing devices is limited by the number of persons the planet has to offer, things, being more numerous than people, provide a lot more long-term room for growth.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

More retailers turning paper checks into e-transfers - MarketWatch - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...-paper-checks-into-e-transfers

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- When an unidentified $30 debit showed up on her bank statement as an electronic funds transfer, Cheryl Hicks was mystified.
  • Each month, three electronic transfers go through her account -- and this wasn't one she recognized. "It just said ACH debit and the amount," said Hicks, a 33-year-old communications manager who lives near Everett, Washington.
  • Hicks soon discovered her phone company transformed the paper check she sent for payment into an e-transfer, and her bank failed to list either the check number or the recipient on her statement.
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  • Hicks' inability to readily identify the EFT debit illustrates a mounting bookkeeping problem some checking customers are encountering as banks and retailers seek to minimize the handling of paper checks to cut costs and boost profit.
  • "While the EFTs are helpful to everybody and clearly more efficient, I'm not sure the banking system has adequate safeguards," said Kent Phelps, a vice president of software engineering for WitsEnd Software, which develops programs enabling check scanning.
  • Customers lack the ability to set parameters on the practice, he said. "I ought to be able to tell the bank 'I'm going to authorize EFT, but I want to be called if its over $5,000 or will empty the bank account."
  • A fast-growing number of U.S. retailers are scanning images of checks into banks' computer systems and destroying the originals. An estimated 461 million check payments have been converted into e-payments since January 2002, according to NACHA, the Electronic Payments Association.
  • Meanwhile, a law called Check 21 will go into effect next October allowing banks to send checks to each other electronically, eliminating the need to transport them manually from bank to bank, and authorizing check "substitutes" to be used in a court of law.
  • Banks and merchants say electronic check scanning helps detect fraud more quickly, while also saving 5 to 25 cents a transaction, according to NACHA.
  • Some problems arise In bank-to-bank electronic transactions, the check payment moves faster through the system -- meaning consumers should no longer count on a three- to five-day lag time. Otherwise, check-writers are unlikely to notice a change, aside from receiving copies of their returned checks in lieu of the originals.
  • Some consumer advocates warn that many merchants aren't fully educated in the legal ins-and-outs of check scanning. Gail Hillebrand, senior attorney with Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, said she's received complaints that companies have run checks through twice, once as an electronic transfer and again as a regular check.
  • "There are a lot of merchants who don't really know what the rules are," Hillebrand said. "The merchant thinks 'you owe me money, I have this check here because I didn't send it in last month, I'll send it through now.'
  • "The fact that that is inconsistent with NACHA rules and probably illegal, the merchant doesn't know and hasn't been educated."
  • Hicks couldn't find any notice on phone bills that her checks would be converted to electronic transfers, though the NACHA rules governing the process require companies to notify consumers every time they plan to convert a check into an electronic payment.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal tests NFC payments app - 0 views

www.mobilecommercedaily.com/...paypal-tests-nfc-payments-app

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • PayPal is testing an NFC mobile payments application at two stores in Sweden while it continues to look for ways to expand access to its payments services.
  • PayPal has been experimenting with NFC for a while and recently incorporated NFC into the latest version of its Android app to enable peer-to-peer payments with two mobile phone users tapping their phones together to transfer money between them. The NFC payments app test is running in conjunction with two Swedish retailers and the Swedish developer Accumulate over a five day period.
  • “There has been some confusion out there,” said Anuj Nayar, director of communications for PayPal, San Jose, CA. “We are not anti NFC.
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  • Offline payments The test is running for five days, during which time anyone who downloads the app from the Android store or Apple store in Sweden and enters their PayPal credentials can receive an NFC sticker when they arrive at one of the two stores so they can tap to pay for items in the store.
  • “Our wallet lives in the cloud and not on devices. There are plenty of ways to access your wallet in the cloud and NFC could be a great way to do that.”
  • “We think it is a very interesting technology and we are looking at ways to use it,” he said. “It is one of the technologies that we are looking at – we are not betting the bank on NFC.
  • PayPal parent company eBay has not been a big supporter of NFC – or near-field communications – technology. However, as a leader in the alternative payments space, it makes sense that PayPal would want to investigate NFC.
  • “While eBay maybe hasn’t been a big proponent, PayPal has been quite vocal about the opportunity,” said Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry, Larkspur, CA. “PayPal is the biggest jewel in the eBay empire, so their vision is, in my opinion, the most interesting driver for eBay corporate.
  • “PayPal’s publicly stated goal is to become as important a payment option offline as it is online,” he said. “NFC is a potentially disruptive technology that could offer fertile ground for PayPal’s offline payments endeavors.”
  • NFC has been embraced by numerous companies such as Google, Isis – which is a partnership of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile – and others. However, there are significant challenges facing these companies’ efforts to expand NFC as there are still a limited number of mobile phones available that support NFC.
  • However, PayPal – as an alternative payment solution – also faces the challenge of getting retailers to accept PayPal payments if it were to try for a broader NFC roll out.
  • “PayPal faces the same challenges with NFC as everyone else in the ecosystem: NFC-enabled phone penetration combined with merchant acceptance penetration,” Mr. Sievers said.
  • “In fact, they face an additional challenge since nearly every existing NFC-enabled merchant takes Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover, but those same points of sale don’t take PayPal yet,” he said.
  • “So PayPal has two things to sell: NFC acceptance and PayPal acceptance. That’s a tough sell.”
  • Long-term strategy While the NFC test is limited, it is another example of how PayPal is trying to bring its technology to bricks-and-mortar retailers. PayPal wants to get merchants to use PayPal and is looking for ways to embed PayPal in the shopping experience via applications, deals and a variety of other merchant services.
  • “EBay is recognizing that NFC is one of those things that would enable them to grow more in a physical retail environment rather than providing online or electronic transactions,” said John Devlin, London-based group director of AutoID and Smart Cards at ABI Research.
  • However, it is likely to be some time before PayPal would be able to deploy an NFC solution on any kind of scale. “This is something that they are thinking about on a medium to long-term basis,” Mr. Devlin said.
  • “In the next couple of years, NFC is really going to be used at the local or national market level rather than an international basis,” he said. “Once it becomes more widely available, that is when PayPal would be more actively interested in pushing ahead.
  • The sticker model of NFC – where an NFC sticker is placed on a mobile device to make it compatible with an NFC reader – is more of a limited solution.
  • “It is not able to plug into the handset and take advantage of all of the different smartphone functionality,” Mr. Devlin said. “It has advantages in that you can upgrade existing handsets quickly and easily but I don’t think anyone is really pushing ahead with stickers for a long-term consumer solution on a mass market level. This indicates that this is a trial rather than a precursor to a wider deployment.”
  • Proximity payments PayPal expects to do $3.5 billion in mobile payments this year using its existing payments solutions. The NFC mobile app test is another way that it is experimenting with new payments solutions as proximity payments grow “This is what we’ve always done – experiment and test and be open to partnerships to drive innovation,” Mr. Nayar said. “What we are going to start to see soon is the growth in proximity payments where you need to be in contact with a reader of some sort,” he said. “This can be done with Bluetooth, RFID and NFC is another way to do it.”
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Top 7 Mobile Commerce Trends in 2011 - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/..._commerce_trends_in_2011p2.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • 4. Offers, Offers and More Offers With the daily deals craze dying down post-Groupon IPO, mobile offers are springing up. Google Offers, Google's response to Groupon's daily deals, continues to expand and personalize its deals. It recently stepped into the mobile commerce space with an Android app. Amazon entered the daily deals space with Amazon Local. Mobile commerce isn't a part of the story, but with Amazon's hefty investment in Living Social and an infrastructure far more mature than Groupon's, Amazon may be waiting for just the right moment before really making its move. Meanwhile, daily deals superhero Groupon moved further into the location-based mobile commerce space through a partnership with Loopt. Soon after the Loopt announcement, Groupon launched Groupon Now, which inserts real-time, location-based offers into the daily deals game. Such offers are usually only available for a few hours, do not include the typical Groupon tipping point and are meant for impulsive mobile users.
  • 5. Shop Till You Sit: Tablet Commerce Tablets are all the rage this year. A recent study by eMarketer.com predicts that one in three online consumers will use a tablet at least once a month by the year 2014. Appel iPads are positioned to dominate the tablet market until 2015. So what are people doing on their tablets? Shopping, naturally. And thus the boom of tablet commerce. Amazon.com, the top revenue-producing Internet retailer, naturally leads the pack with a strong tablet-optimized site. Couch commerce, the act of sitting on one's couch and shopping from a smartphone and tablet, saw a strong increase this year - especially after Thanksgiving dinner and on Black Friday. Amazon launched its Kindle Fire tablet on September 28. ReadWriteWeb Writer Jon Mitchell calls it a store with a screen, quite literally suggesting that its sole purpose is to be a media consumption device. As the Kindle Fire continues to gain consumer mindshare and more developers flock to the Amazon Appstore (don't call it the App Store, OK?), we expect more tablet commerce growth in this area. Shopping catalogs designed specifically for tablets will add to the tablet commerce experience. Google launched a shopping catalog app for tablets back in August. Google Catalogs, as they're called, are like "window shopping with your iPad and Android tablet." The only potential problem for retailers? Now they won't have catalog readers' home addresses on hand.
  • 6. Location and Local Groundswell: Chicago to Des Moines to Boston and Back Again The partnership between daily deals service Groupon and location check-in Foursquare was a big one. The two got together and made it happen. Or, as the Groupon blog says, "when we think of mobile addiction beyond Now! we think foursquare, and many of you guys do, too." The idea of positioning daily deals on Foursquare as an "addiction" doesn't exactly insure longevity; rather, it signals imminent burnout. But hey, we'll forgive Groupon's marketing team - with Groupon's stock prices slumping, the company is needs to keep looking for new ways to hit up consumers. Dwolla, mobile payments system based in U.S. mobile payments capital Des Moines, Iowa, seeks to completely sidestep credit cards. Unlike its main competitor PayPal, Dwolla does not snag a percentage of the transaction; instead, it asks for a shiny silver quarter, regardless of the transaction amount. LevelUp from Boston-based SCVNGR brings location-based gaming to the daily deals space. The idea is simple: Users will receive better deals the more they use the system. Much like the "unlocking" of Foursquare badges, LevelUp users will unlock new "levels" of awesome deals with particular merchants as they continue buying. Like its competitor Dwolla, SCVNGR recently began building local mobile payments into LevelUp.
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  • 7. Don't Forget The Dongle Dongles refer to a device that is connect to a computer to allow access to wireless or protected software. In the case of mobile commerce, a dongle would be a mobile credit card swiper that attaches to the mobile device. Square, Verisign and Intuit lead the way in dongle innovation. But with Google Wallet and NFCs (near field communications) on the move, do dongles have a future? Square's Card Case digital wallet is a dongle. It lets you pay by saying your name and only your name - if the merchant you visit is in the Square directory. With its dongle reader, Square aims to make mobile payments mainstream. Intuit's recent mobile payments innovation introduce the dongle-to-debit-card. The company wants to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to accept transactions on the go. While Square is the leader in the dongle world, Intuit offers QuickBooks, tax refunds, bank partnerships, health check-ins and other management systems. Dongle providers such as Verifone, Intuit, Erply, ROAMPay, TRUSTe and PayAnywhere will continue to push their products as the space evolves.
  • Conclusion Mobile commerce is at a tipping point. It has not hit a critical, mainstream mass, however. First, the battle of NFCs vs. mobile wallets vs. dongles will need to settle, with one emerging and the others either following and finding their niches, or disappearing completely. Carrier billing will play a crucial role in how consumers start easing into the idea of mobile commerce. The daily deals space will become more focused on mobile, particularly in the ares of personalization and location-based targeting - people who use their phones are glued to them, naturally, and they must start receiving time-sensitive offers at exactly the right moment. Tablet commerce will continue to expand, as more people buy tablets and engage in "couch commerce." Catalogs, tablet-optimized websites and fast conversion rates make this the perfect platform for capturing consumers who already feel devoted to their tablets. In the dongle space, Square will continue to position themselves as the thought leaders, though they will face a fierce competition from Intuit.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Does Facebook hold the future of mobile payments in its hands? - Mobile Commerce Daily ... - 0 views

www.mobilecommercedaily.com/...f-mobile-payments-in-its-hands

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • With more than 200 million mobile users, Facebook and its currency platform Credits is poised to be the future of how we pay for both virtual and physical goods.
  • Right now there are various different technologies and start-ups actively looking at ways to penetrate the mobile payments market. Each company has taken a different approach, from digital bar codes to near field communication (NFC).
  • Introduced in May of 2009, Facebook Credits was originally designed as a virtual currency to allow people to make purchases within games and non-gaming applications on the Facebook platform.
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  • Much like Apple with iTunes, Facebook takes a 30 percent cut on every dollar spent through the Credits platform.
  • Today users can buy Credits with 15 currencies, including U.S. dollars, Euros, the British Pound and the Venezuelan Bolivar.
  • It is important to first highlight, that for any mobile payments system to work, consumers will need to open some form of application to allow users to connect the phone to complete the payment. 
  • To date, Facebook sees over 200 million unique users accessing the social network through a mobile devices each month.
  • Almost all of the major brands who would adopt mobile payments in the beginning (i.e. Best Buy, Gap, Target) have invested heavily into growing a Facebook presence. It is this ability to connect to users and their social graph through a Facebook payment option that makes Credits and mobile payments an attractive model.
  • From this point, it is Facebook’s network that makes its payment option so attractive. As I scan my phone to finalize my purchase, I am presented with the option to share this purchase with my friends. Selecting yes, opens up an additional discount for my friends and I. From there my friends have the option to use the promotion through Best Buy’s ecommerce page or on location.
  • For now, Facebook prefers to play down talk of its broader ambitions for Credits. The 30 percent tax Facebook imposes on those who accept Credits might be too high to allow for the regular sale physical goods and services.
  • Other big players include PayPal who has more than 81 million active registered accounts and 210 million accounts, in 190 markets and it supported 24 currencies.
  • One factor that is definite is the speed at which small business will adapt mobile transactions.
  • Probably an even bigger player is Apple and its 100 million iTunes users. The iPhone is set to be the main phone to drive mobile payments, even if other phones offer these features. But one thing is for sure: the mobile (social) payments market will be fragmented for the first few years and Facebook is easily in the position to come out victorious.
  • While analysts feel 2011 is the year for mobile payments, there is still uncertainty of how quickly consumers will move their wallet to a digital format or what platform they will use. 
  • Google, with its Google Checkout and Android phones is also set to be a big player. With NFC technology being implemented on all future Google phones, we expect a mobile payment app preloaded on these phones. 
  • Third-party companies such as Bling Nation and Square to name a few win over merchants by cutting the transaction process fee by as much as 50 percent. With consumers swiping their debits cards more so than ever, this is a huge savings for any company.
  • Additionally, the three major U.S wireless carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile partnered with Discover Card to form a mobile payment company called “Isis,” a venture to provide mobile payment carrier billing solution for payments.
  • The closet form of mobile payments in the U.S. that can be utilized nationally is the Starbucks digital gift card. 
  • While this option only applies to Starbucks stores, consumers can now makes purchases by scanning their phones.
  • The biggest challenge, currently keeping mobile payments from going mainstream is technology adoption. 
  • Not only do consumers need to carry a phone that has the correct technology, retailers also need to implement technology that connects with the phone.
  • Other challenges that could cause slow growth are the number of companies attempting to break into the space. 
  • From small start-ups to large tech companies such as Google and Apple, many consumers could be slow to adopt as they wait it out and see which platform becomes widely adopted.
  • To truly accelerate growth, we believe a large company needs to step up and look at the opportunity as a way to break into the $6.2 trillion retail market by covering the costs of technology adoption.
  • One player who is seen to have this ability is Apple. 
  • As the largest tech company in the world, rumors have come up, that Apple will implement NFC technology into the next generation iPhone 5 and with 100 million users already connected through iTunes, giving away the retail technology to scan mobile payments could be a quick way to gain accelerated usage.
  • Though it cannot be applied to all of your purchases, Starbucks seems to be the furthest along, allowing customers to purchase digital gift cards that can be scanned at all Starbuck locations nationwide.
  • To help accelerate growth, implementing a rewards program will draw more consumers to try the new payment platform.  This option to collect and track rewards is one of the key features that have helped Starbucks see quicker adoption.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Apple quietly begins iPhone as wallet in-store trials - Computerworld Blogs [08Nov11] - 0 views

blogs.computerworld.com/...hone_as_wallet_in_store_trials

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The mobile wallet is becoming a reality. Apple [AAPL] has already begun plotting to turn your iPhone into an iWallet which uses iTunes as your virtual bank.
  • The company this week begins rolling out its EasyPay payment system in US retail stores. Available inside Apple's own Apple Store for iOS app, EasyPay lets users purchase accessories at Apple retail stores just by scanning in the barcode and completing the transaction on their iOS device.
  • Payment is taken using your Apple ID. Users need to enter their ID and then payment is taken using the credit card associated with their iTunes account.
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  • This is a much bigger deal than it may seem, as World Payments Report 2011 informs: -- 15% of all card transactions will be mobile by 2013.-- 20 billion credit card transactions take place each year.
  • PayPal should be shaking in its boots. And as for Google Wallet? One day, you'll be paying for your public transit fees using iTunes and your iPhone.
  • There's three ways Apple may choose to create a payment infrastructure. It is possible there are more, but we'll settle on three for now:
  • -- NFC support in the iPhone 5Advantages: NFC is fully supported by the credit companies.Disadvantages: NFC isn't yet ready for prime time, but is expected to reach a much wider market by 2013.
  • -- Bluetooth-based payments: Advantages: It is possible now to use Bluetooth to make secure payment exchanges.Disadvantages: There's no agreed financial Bluetooth-based transfer standard, meaning there's no back-up or insurance in case of fraud.
  • -- Over-the-airAdvantages: Does it matter if you wave your device across a terminal? Why not pay from where you are? You could buy goods and services in this way.Disadvantages: I would argue that Apple's devices would still require RFID tags in order that payment status be easily verified. If RFID is required, then NFC makes sense.
  • What makes Apple's iTunes approach effective is that by using its existing credit service as a bank, it achieves an immediate potential user base of hundreds of millions of people, while also offering an extra layer of protection between banks and customers. If fraud takes place, Apple's insurance should protect a customer, reducing the risk to the banks.
  • Tie these NFC systems up with Apple's other in-development mobile technologies and there's lots of potential scenarios.
  • Some statistics may be of interest:-- 50,000 Dutch nurses now use NFC  to track and manage home healthcare visits.-- The Museum of London already offers interactive NFC services.-- Over 60% of manufacturers plan to put NFC in cars.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

The Consumerization of Business Software | VentureFizz [08Nov11] - 0 views

venturefizz.com/...sumerization-business-software

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • One of the themes that we've been most interested in at NextView over the last 12+ months has been the impact of consumer web trends on business software.  
  • But I've seen an acceleration of the impact consumer web trends are having on business software, and believe strongly that it will provide a thread of innovation for SaaS companies for the next 5+ years.
  • The classic delineations of web products for business and consumer ("enterprise" direct selling, on premise vs cloud, etc) are only getting blurrier.
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  • There's a couple different forces I see at work:
  • 1) Selling & Customer Acquisition
  • 2) Users Drive Enterprise Tech Adoption
  • 3) UI/UX Matters in B2B
  • At present the consumer web is the tail wagging the enterprise dog, in that you see business software companies copying consumer companies' marketing strategies, product features, etc.  I think this will continue for a few years at least.  But hopefully B2B software companies will innovate in some interesting ways that will bleed into consumer-facing products.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Online Video Ad Budgets Expected To Rise Sharply In 2012 | TechCrunch [08Nov11] - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...pected-to-rise-sharply-in-2012

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Here’s some good news for web video publishers and producers. Online video advertising budgets are expected to jump sharply in 2012. Brand advertisers who purchased online video ads this year are projected to spend 47 percent more next year. These numbers were released this morning in the second annual “Video State of the Industry Survey” by Adap.tv and Digiday.
  • For advertisers that didn’t purchase any video ads so far this year, 84% say they will include digital video in their campaigns in Q4 2011 or 2012.
  • Advertisers say they are most likely to shift spending away from display and print ads to fund the increased online video spending.
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  • The report, which surveyed nearly 600 advertisers, publishers, and video technology providers, says rates for interactive video ads are up an average of 19 percent over last year.
  • Some other key findings: Brand engagement is the top online video campaign objective. Sharing video via social networks is an important return-on-investment metric for buyers. Rich media overlays, pre-rolls, and content integration are the favorite ad formats. Page-roll, expanding video banners, and post-rolls are the least favorite. Video ad spending on the iPad is up 18%, the highest among all devices. Average CPM for Premium content, broadcast content online: $21-$30 Average CPM for Mid-Tier, professionally produced content: $11-$20 Average CPM for User Generated Content: $0 – $5
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal Processing $10,000 in Mobile Payments Per Minute [Infographic] [07Nov11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...in_mobile_payments_per_min.php

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • with the holidays coming up and more consumers than ever expected to make purchases from mobile devices. PayPal believes there is a lot of horizontal movement to be made in the mobile payments space and with the power of eBay behind it, the company thinks it will be the leader in the ecosystem for years to come.
  • PayPal specifically realizes that it has lost a lot of the consumer mindshare in mobile payments with everybody talking about how NFC may or may not change how payments fundamentally work.
  • For 2011, PayPal expects to do $3.5 billion in mobile payments volume. With mobile payments expected to be a $600 billion industry by 2015, PayPal is positioning itself to take a big portion of that pie.
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  • Laura Chambers, PayPal's head of mobile, said in an interview at CTIA in San Diego in October that the company sees a lot of data on people's spending habits and that there is lot of traction for evening shoppers.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

The Mobile Payments Capital of the U.S: Des Moines, Iowa? [07Nov11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...tal_of_the_us_des_moines_i.php

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 07 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Des Moines is the home of mobile payments platform Dwolla. It is an interesting case study - local startup creating buzz within the community and getting retailers and consumers to actually use the platform. Dwolla has created a mobile payments ecosystem from the bottom up.
  • Within a 5-mile radius of Des Moines there are 500 to 700 business that are using mobile payments through Dwolla. The company works kind of like a payments version of Foursquare. You check at the register in the store using your phone and a pre-loaded Dwolla account.
  • it is likely that the company will be able to partner with banks and financial institutions in the near future to go straight from a bank account to the retailer.
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  • Dwolla sees itself more like Visa than PayPal. EBay may actually disagree with that considering that it is pushing very hard into the mobile wallets segment of the mobile payments industry and Dwolla operates in much the same way.
  • Dwolla wants to position itself as a go-to resource for financial institutions to create a mobile payments infrastructure in communities such as Des Moines. Square, with its recent Card Case update, is also playing in this space.
  • Consumers benefit from Dwolla because of the location and social features of the platform.
  • The benefit of Dwolla is that it is basically electronic cash. This is one of the truest "mobile wallets" concepts.
  • Proxi was released by Dwolla in August. It allows users to open the app and see what merchants are accepting mobile payments via Dwolla in their vicinity.
  • The company can position itself to be both the front end and back end of the payment process. As such, Google Wallet, Square, Intuit GoPayment (or any of the other dongle-based competitors) could theoretically tie into it as a backend.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

EnStratus raises $3.5M for hybrid cloud management - Cloud Computing News [07Nov11] - 0 views

gigaom.com/...5m-for-hybrid-cloud-management

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Cloud computing startup enStratus has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to grow its business of managing all types of clouds across a common interface. El Dorado Ventures led the round with participation from Vesbridge Partners.
  • The long and short of enStratus’ technology is that it provides a secure platform for managing and monitoring popular public and private cloud offerings through a single interface. In theory, this means customers can utilize multiple clouds and even switch between cloud providers without having to learn the intricacies of each provider’s APIs or management consoles.
  • The Minneapolis-based EnStratus is similar to the more widely known RightScale service, although enStratus actually supports more clouds. It currently claims support for Amazon Web Services, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Bluelock, Cloud Central, Cloud.com, CloudSigma, EMC Atmos (e emc), Eucalyptus, Google Storage, GoGrid, Nimbula, OpenStack, Rackspace, Terremark, VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Express and Windows Azure.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • EnStratus has been on something of a hiring binge lately, including bringing on popular cloud blogger (now GigaOM contributor) and former Cisco cloud strategist James Urquhart as VP of product strategy.
Dan R.D.

Google Offers is now live in Brooklyn! - The Next Web [09Nov11] - 0 views

thenextweb.com/...lyn-starting-with-4-for-sharks

1UE_NS deals

shared by Dan R.D. on 09 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Google Offers went live in Brooklyn, New York today, much to the happiness of everyone from Kings County to Gowanus. Google Offers, a direct competitor to companies like Groupon and Living Social, first landed in Manhattan this past July with Belgian fries and mango chutney at Pommes Frites. Today, Google’s daily deal service is offering $4 general admission tickets to the New York Aquarium, which is 73% off the normal $14.95 price tag. The Aquarium, which is located just off the Coney Island boardwalk is open year round and features animals such as California sea lions, stingrays, tropical fish, moray eels, penguins, seals, otters, walruses, starfish, sea turtles and sharks!
  • Location Media Microsoft Mobile Sessions Shareables Social Media Twitter Video Editions Africa Asia Australia Canada Europe India Latin America Middle East UK United States Languages France Nederland Polska Portugal Romania Russia Google Offers is now live in Brooklyn: Starting with $4 for SHARKS! 9th November 2011 by Courtney Boyd Myers Google Offers went live in Brooklyn, New York today, much to the happiness of everyone from Kings County to Gowanus. Google Offers, a direct competitor to companies like Groupon and Living Social, first landed in Manhattan this past July with Belgian fries and mango chutney at Pommes Frites. Today, Google’s daily deal service is offering $4 general admission tickets to the New York Aquarium, which is 73% off the normal $14.95 price tag. The Aquarium, which is located just off the Coney Island boardwalk is open year round and features animals such as California sea lions, stingrays, tropical fish, moray eels, penguins, seals, otters, walruses, starfish, sea turtles and sharks!
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