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D'coda Dcoda

Cloud Research - IBM opens new cloud lab in Singapore [5May10] - 0 views

openintelligence.amplify.com/...-cloud-lab-in-singapore-5may10

opportunity

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 08 May 10 - Cached
  • IBM is opening a cloud computing laboratory in Singapore to help businesses, government and research institutions and institutes of higher learning to design, adopt and reap benefits of cloud technologies. The new lab housed at Changi business park is part of it’s expansion of its cloud computing capabilities, and puts Singapore and the ASEAN region on the map as the eleventh cloud computing lab. This new addition will be part of the network of labs in Hong Kong, Ireland, Vietnam, China, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, India, Korea and the US.Through briefings, technology deployment and development sessions, the Singapore lab will work closely with businesses, government and research institutions and institutes of higher learning to design and deploy their own cloud environments.Read more at www.info
Dan R.D.

frog design: Smart Brands In The Connected Age - PSFK - 0 views

www.psfk.com/...ands-in-the-connected-age.html

5RFID_IOT

shared by Dan R.D. on 04 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The internet of things with its unprecedented level of connectivity does not only catalyze the rise of “social” but also the rise of “smart.” And smart means complex. Increasingly, products and services are multi-functional, multi-layered, and connected to a broader ecosystem of services, serving as a platform for added-value applications. Companies, across industries, are beginning to develop smart solutions – from smart phones, smart energy, smart healthcare, smart housing, to smart mobility, and more. Smart ecosystems have emerged as the lynchpin of innovation – as the holy grail for user experiences that brands can truly own.
  • What if “connectedness” was a new modus operandi for brands and required them to be “smart brands”? By textbook definition, smart systems are self-organized systems with built-in feedback mechanisms and the ability to constantly reorganize themselves in order to adapt to their ever-changing environment. They are capable of describing and analyzing a situation, and taking decisions based on the available data in a predictive or adaptive manner, thereby performing smart actions.
  • as Allison Fine, author of Social Change in the Connected World, puts it aptly: “It is counterintuitive but true; the more decision making we push away from the center, the more powerful our social networks become. That’s the power-to-the-edges concept.”
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  • Social intelligence: Connected brands are social brands, and if they are smart, social for them means to be “socially intelligent.”
  • Social intelligence, in the most wide-ranging definition, is the capacity to “get along with people in general, social technique or ease in society, knowledge of social matters, susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group, as well as insight into the temporary moods or underlying personality traits of strangers.” Applied to brands, social intelligence can be interpreted as the art of detecting the most subtle cue in understanding an individual’s behavior, and the ability to not only receive constant feedback but to convert it into changed behavior.
D'coda Dcoda

Orange customers can now pay for goods in UK stores with their mobiles [21May11] - 0 views

thenextweb.com/...-shops-with-their-mobile-phone

3BT_NFC

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 May 11 - No Cached
  • D'coda Dcoda on 22 May 11
     
    today, Orange and Barclaycard officially launched 'Quick Tap', which is the UK's first contactless mobile phone payments service. The service is designed for small purchases of under £15, and contactless readers will be available at over 50,000 UK stores. You'll know that a store has the special reader when it displays the contactless payments symbol, and Pret A Manger, Eat and Subway are among the outlets to have signed up already. Quick Tap uses a secure SIM-based approach to mobile payments, and Orange customers will require a 'Quick Tap' enabled handset. The scheme launches with a Quick Tap enabled version of the Samsung Tocco Lite, and the device will be available on pay as you go and pay monthly price plans. More handsets are expected to follow from a selection of manufacturers. Barclaycard, Barclays debit or Orange Credit Card users can transfer funds of up to £100 simply and securely onto the handset's Quick Tap app, after which the phone is ready to make payments of £15 and under in a single transaction.
D'coda Dcoda

How Today's Tech Alienates the Elderly [20May11] - 0 views

news.slashdot.org/firehose.pl

1UE_NS

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 21 May 11 - No Cached
  • "A UK academic has blamed unnecessarily complicated user interfaces for putting older people off today's technology. Mike Bradley, senior lecturer in product design and engineering at Middlesex University, claims efforts to be more inclusive are being undermined by software and hardware design that is exclusively targeted at younger users. He cites the example of the seemingly simple iPhone alarm clock. 'They're faced with a screen with a clock face and a plus sign icon, and they couldn't understand that you were "adding an alarm," so they didn't click the plus sign to get through to that menu. Pressing the clock image takes you through to choices about how the clock is displayed, and it's not easy to get back again.'"
Dan R.D.

Gamification: 75% Psychology, 25% Technology [06Oct11] - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...on-75-psychology-25-technology

gamification 1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 06 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Should enterprise applications be as addictive as Angry Birds? A true believer in gamification would say yes, if you want people to actually use them.
  • [Social media is a powerful tool to connect with customers, but it can create big problems for your company if it's not done right. Learn more at 10 Social Networking Don'ts.]
  • Most of all, gamificiation is about understanding that "if you can make something more fun, and include notions of play, you can get people to do things they otherwise might not want to do."
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  • Businesses have successfully applied gamification principles to achieving goals like reducing travel expenses (Google) and improving cashier checkout performance (Target). The Google example is interesting because it "actually got people talking about how to save money on travel," whereas the more traditional corporate water cooler conversation would be about how to cheat the system, Zimmerman said.
  • "Gamification by Design" largely focuses on the psychology of engagement and ways it can be applied to business applications.
  • Gamifying an application doesn't necessarily mean adding fancy graphics and sound effects, but often it does mean keeping score and letting "players" see how they rank on a leader board--the equivalent of the high scores screen on a video game. In a business context, that might mean letting salespeople see how they rank and how close they are to achieving a goal or securing a bonus as a way of getting the competitive juices flowing.
  • On the other hand, in a traditional loyalty program you might award one point for every dollar a user spends. In a gamified system, you might want to instead provide variable, unpredictable reinforcement where participants can hit the jackpot. This is the design principle that keeps slot machine players glued to their chairs, even though they ought to know the house always wins.
Dan R.D.

Merging the Digital and Virtual Worlds | Product Design and Development - 0 views

pddnet.com/ital-and-virtual-worlds-112811

5RFID_IOT

shared by Dan R.D. on 02 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Putting sensors and actuators in everything from homes and cars to shoes and coffee cups promises to make our daily lives easier, safer and more efficient. But such 'ambient intelligence' requires a merger of the virtual and digital worlds. EU-funded researchers in the Sensei project are bridging the gap and their results are already leading to 'smart cities' being set up all over Europe.
  • 'Today, the internet world is a virtual world of data mostly stored and accessed from servers,' says Dr Hérault. In the future, we will have an 'Internet of things' in which a multitude of things in the real, physical world will be digitised continuously: in many situations, we won't just be asking web servers for data, we will be asking sensors in everyday objects for data, he suggests. 'We need to understand how best to interconnect the real world and the virtual world.' 
  • An open service interface that uses semantic information to process data means that information is accessible and understandable to both humans and machines.  'You could ask, for example, "What is the temperature on Oxford Street?" The system would decode that semantic information, access sensor networks on Oxford Street that have temperature sensors, check the reliability of each network with regard to information quality, and return an answer,' Dr Hérault explains. 
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  • Within the Sensei architecture, each sensor and actuator network is conceived as an 'island' that, through an interface middleware, can be connected to the overall system and can publish data independently of the technologies they are using or the type of information involved. An island could be a home, a bus station, a car or your own personal network of smart clothing and mobile devices. From a privacy and security perspective, each user is able to control which type of information they wish to share and with whom. 
  • 'If we are going to deploy billions of wirelessly interconnected sensors and actuators, the impact in terms of energy consumption and carbon footprint could become very significant. It is thus very important to develop sensors and actuators able to scavenge energy from their environment and communicate with ultra-low power energy consumption,' Dr Hérault says. 
  • Efficient sensors, operating within the Sensei architecture and coupled with technology developed in a parallel EU-funded project 'Wireless sensor network testbeds' (Wisebed), are already in the process of making their real world debut. As part of the 'SmartSantander' initiative, a follow-up project to Sensei, 12,000 devices are being deployed in the northern Spanish city of Santander over the coming year. In a first implementation they will be used to monitor available parking places and inform drivers about where there is space available, helping to smooth the flow of traffic in the city and reduce pollution. 
  • In this project, sensor and actuator networks will be set up in Santander to provide smart street lighting, dimming the lights to save energy when there is no one on the street, for example, and turning them up if some kind of incident or increased activity is detected. In Aarhus, the main focus will be to collect data about the water and sewage infrastructure, shape the information and use it in an intelligent and autonomous way. In Berlin, partners are working on the development of 'intelligent waste baskets' in order to optimise waste management. The Trento partners, meanwhile, are focusing on the development of intelligent water management in order to improve the utilisation of water for both drinking and energy generation in mountain areas. In Birmingham, transport infrastructure and services, including trams, buses, roads, cycle paths and walkways, will be optimised leading to streamlined transitions between modes, time saving and greater efficiency across the board. 
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How PayPal plans to scale its in-store payment system - 0 views

gigaom.com/...le-its-in-store-payment-system

3BT_NFC payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 12 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • PayPal’s first retail tests of its in-store payment system is happening at Home Depot, the payment company acknowledged last week. But the bigger test will be ensuring that many more retailers and merchants are in a position to easily integrate PayPal’s system as it looks to roll out its offering this year.
  • PayPal is taking a big step forward by partnering with AJB Software Designs, which helps connect the point of sale terminals at many tier-one retailers to payment processors and financial institutions. AJB is now incorporating PayPal’s mobile payment system into its framework and building out a specific PayPal interface, which will allow PayPal users to pay through 250,000 point-of-sale terminals that connect to AJB software. AJB said it services 20 percent of the top retailers in North America. The AJB integration should be become available to retailers in the first quarter of this year.
  • Retailers will still have to decide if they want to enable payments via PayPal. And the process of outfitting stores and chains can take anywhere from days to weeks. But if they choose to make the software upgrade, retailers will be able to receive payments via a PayPal Access Card or through an “empty hand” payment in which a user accesses their PayPal account by entering in their phone number at a point of sale terminal. In both cases, they will need to confirm a transaction with a PIN code and then AJB’s software takes the request and pings PayPal, which authenticates the user. PayPal can send back coupon information or deals stored on a user’s PayPal app, which the user can then decide to apply before selecting their payment form and checking out. After the transaction, users will receive an e-receipt on their PayPal app and online in the PayPal account.
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  • Pat Polillo, vice president of sales and support for AJB, told me it’s unclear how many of AJB’s more than 140 major retailers will sign on with PayPal’s system when it becomes available later this year. But he said it’s an appealing option for retailers who don’t have to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware to accept payments from PayPal’s mobile payment system. He said five retailers have already asked if AJB will be working to support PayPal’s system.
  • “What’s nice about PayPal’s solution is it doesn’t require NFC hardware. That’s how you can envision that retailers would say it makes sense, because it uses the infrastructure already in their stores,” Polillo said.
  • PayPal plans to strike similar agreements with other payment ecosystems, PayPal spokesman Anuj Nayar told TechCrunch earlier this week.  Nayar told me recently that PayPal’s in-store payment system will roll out over the next 12 to 24 months. This is the beauty of PayPal’s approach because it doesn’t require consumers or merchants to have NFC devices, which is something PayPal has harped on a number of times. And if PayPal can do a good selling job on retailers, it has a pretty quick path toward a broad deployment.
  • But getting in stores is just the first step for PayPal. It has to show more value for merchants. As I wrote recently, PayPal is looking to leverage location-based offers to help drive traffic to retailers and encourage users to pay via PayPal, which can close the redemption loop and help show retailers the efficacy of using PayPal. But there needs to more ways for merchants and retailers to connect to consumers. Being able to establish a user’s presence inside a store will allow a merchant to send them offers and discounts. PayPal has shown off how it hopes to help merchants do this by encouraging users to scan QR codes when they enter a store for a coupon. And it is planning to let consumers scan items to check for inventory or purchase products directly from a store aisle and have it shipped home.
  • All of these other added elements are going to be necessary for PayPal to sell its system to merchants, who need more than just another payment system. Those elements will come in time but for now, PayPal is laying the ground work to be in a lot of stores later this year.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Digital identification and mobile payments - 0 views

mbanking.blogspot.com/...identification-and-mobile.html

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The fundamental problem with all payment systems is to accurately verify the identification of the buyer. If one can be hundred percent sure that the identification of the buyer is absolutely accurate, one can be hundred percent sure that the payment is not fraudulent. In the physical world this is achieved by verifying physical documentation (for instance ID documents, fingerprints etc.). The problem is of course much more difficult in the digital world.
  • That is why solving digital identification is almost the same as building a fraud-proof digital payment system. This is emphasised by a recent announcement from Paypal (Read here). In this announcement, Paypal aims to become the custodian for their clients' digital ID's. Similarly, deploying well-designed mobile payment solutions in emerging markets is similar to rolling out robust identification systems. One should consider combining both problems: rolling our national ID systems at the same time as deploying mobile payment systems.
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 $100 OLPC Tablet Is Really Real and Debuting at CES - 0 views

gizmodo.com/5873942

Tablets Global Education Opportunities 1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 07 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Building on its success with laptops designed for developing countries, the One Laptop Per Child project is set to unveil a long-awaited tablet at CES next week. Here's what you get for $100.
  • The OLPC has been kicking around the idea of a super-affordable tablet for over a year. Originally known as the XO-3, but now dubbed the XO 3.0, the tablet will feature an 8-inch 1024x768 screen with some models also offering a PixelQi 3qi display that mimics E-paper. A Marvell Armada PXA618 chip and 512MB of RAM reside in the tablet's ruggedized shell and will run either Linux Sugar or Android OS.
D'coda Dcoda

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Busines... - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...ration-flux-future-of-business

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 16 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The business climate, it turns out, is a lot like the weather. And we've entered a next-two-hours era. The pace of change in our economy and our culture is accelerating--fueled by global adoption of social, mobile, and other new technologies--and our visibility about the future is declining.
  • Uncertainty has taken hold in boardrooms and cubicles, as executives and workers (employed and unemployed) struggle with core questions: Which competitive advantages have staying power? What skills matter most? How can you weigh risk and opportunity when the fundamentals of your business may change overnight?
  • Look at the global cell-phone business. Just five years ago, three companies controlled 64% of the smartphone market: Nokia, Research in Motion, and Motorola. Today, two different companies are at the top of the industry: Samsung and Apple. This sudden complete swap in the pecking order of a global multibillion-dollar industry is unprecedented. Consider the meteoric rise of Groupon and Zynga, the disruption in advertising and publishing, the advent of mobile ultrasound and other "mHealth" breakthroughs (see "Open Your Mouth And Say 'Aah!'). Online-education efforts are eroding our assumptions about what schooling looks like. Cars are becoming rolling, talking, cloud-connected media hubs. In an age where Twitter and other social-media tools play key roles in recasting the political map in the Mideast; where impoverished residents of refugee camps would rather go without food than without their cell phones; where all types of media, from music to TV to movies, are being remade, redefined, defended, and attacked every day in novel ways--there is no question that we are in a new world.
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  • Any business that ignores these transformations does so at its own peril. Despite recession, currency crises, and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead. The frictionless spread of information and the expansion of personal, corporate, and global networks have plenty of room to run. And here's the conundrum: When businesspeople search for the right forecast--the road map and model that will define the next era--no credible long-term picture emerges. There is one certainty, however. The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.
  • To thrive in this climate requires a whole new approach, which we'll outline in the pages that follow. Because some people will thrive. They are the members of Generation Flux. This is less a demographic designation than a psychographic one: What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates--and even enjoys--recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. Not everyone will join Generation Flux, but to be successful, businesses and individuals will have to work at it.
  • Digital competition destroyed bookseller Borders, and yet the big, stodgy music labels--seemingly the ground zero for digital disruption--defy predictions of their demise. Walmart has given up trying to turn itself into a bank, but before retail bankers breathe a sigh of relief, they ought to look over their shoulders at Square and other mobile-wallet initiatives. Amid a reeling real-estate market, new players like Trulia and Zillow are gobbling up customers. Even the law business is under siege from companies like LegalZoom, an online DIY document service. "All these industries are being revolutionized," observes Pete Cashmore, the 26-year-old founder of social-news site Mashable, which has exploded overnight to reach more than 20 million users a month. "It's come to technology first, but it will reach every industry. You're going to have businesses rise and fall faster than ever."
  • You Don't Know What You Don't Know "In a big company, you never feel you're fast enough." Beth Comstock, the chief marketing officer of GE
  • Within GE, she says, "our traditional teams are too slow. We're not innovating fast enough. We need to systematize change." Comstock connected me with Susan Peters, who oversees GE's executive-development effort. "The pace of change is pretty amazing," Peters says. "There's a need to be less hierarchical and to rely more on teams. This has all increased dramatically in the last couple of years."
  • Executives at GE are bracing for a new future. The challenge they face is the same one staring down wide swaths of corporate America, not to mention government, schools, and other institutions that have defined how we've lived: These organizations have structures and processes built for an industrial age, where efficiency is paramount but adaptability is terribly difficult. We are finely tuned at taking a successful idea or product and replicating it on a large scale. But inside these legacy institutions, changing direction is rough.
  • " The true challenge lies elsewhere, he explains: "In an increasingly turbulent and interconnected world, ambiguity is rising to unprecedented levels. That's something our current systems can't handle.
  • "There's a difference between the kind of problems that companies, institutions, and governments are able to solve and the ones that they need to solve," Patnaik continues. "Most big organizations are good at solving clear but complicated problems. They're absolutely horrible at solving ambiguous problems--when you don't know what you don't know. Faced with ambiguity, their gears grind to a halt.
  • The security of the 40-year career of the man in the gray-flannel suit may have been overstated, but at least he had a path, a ladder. The new reality is multiple gigs, some of them supershort (see "The Four-Year Career"), with constant pressure to learn new things and adapt to new work situations, and no guarantee that you'll stay in a single industry.
  • "So many people tell me, 'I don't know what you do,'" Kumra says. It's an admission echoed by many in Generation Flux, but it doesn't bother her at all. "I'm a collection of many things. I'm not one thing."
  • The point here is not that Kumra's tool kit of skills allows her to cut through the ambiguity of this era. Rather, it is that the variety of her experiences--and her passion for new ones--leaves her well prepared for whatever the future brings. "I had to try something entrepreneurial. I had to try social enterprise. I needed to understand government," she says of her various career moves. "I just needed to know all this."
  • You do not have to be a jack-of-all-trades to flourish in the age of flux, but you do need to be open-minded.
  • Nuke Nostalgia If ambiguity is high and adaptability is required, then you simply can't afford to be sentimental about the past. Future-focus is a signature trait of Generation Flux. It is also an imperative for businesses: Trying to replicate what worked yesterday only leaves you vulnerable.
  • "We now recognize that external focus is more multifaceted than simply serving 'the customer,'" says Peters, "that other stakeholders have to be considered. We talk about how to get and apply external knowledge, how to lead in ambiguous situations, how to listen actively, and the whole idea of collaboration."
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

The Future Of Mobile Payments: Text A Word And Pay For Something - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/d-and-pay-for-something-2012-2

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 04 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Imagine a world where by simply texting a word, like "Sandwich" will result in a quick and seamless transaction so you could  go about your day.  Think about how much easier our lives would be if we didn't have to wait in line, handle cash or be turned away from food or beverage if we don't have our wallets in hand
  • What if texting wasn't just meant for communication, but also designed for transaction?
  • Today, most people take more precautions about carrying their mobile devices than carrying their wallets or purses.
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  • The new question is: if your house is on fire what do you grab, your wallet or your phone?
  • I bet the answer is an overwhelming "phone", since we do almost everything with our mobile devices and very soon we won't be needing a wallet.
  • Our vision at Seconds is to make it easier for merchants and customers to interact and transact.  This is no more apparent than when looking at our latest innovations on the mobile payment front: Pay by Text.
  • Okay, here's a great one.... how about anything to do with hospitality?  Already, when you check in to a hotel they ask for your contact information, namely a cell phone number.  By running on the Seconds platform the can now open a quick and easy channel for you to text and pay for room service, any and all products... not to mention your room.  Or what about on a Vegas Casino floor....
  • Important Note: This is not carrier billing, where you place the transaction onto your cell phone bill.  Seconds is completely separate from the carrier and a stand alone mobile payment system.
  • We are currently one month into a pilot program with a customer testing the functionality and perfecting the process.   Each week we are seeing more and more mobile transactions through Pay by Text, and if things keep going the way they are now this could become the default payment method outside simple food offerings.
  • Roll with me for a moment.  Imagine going to a movie and rather than waiting in line for the teller to give you a ticket you just simply text "Mission Impossible 4" to the box office and the next thing you know you have paid for the movie and are sent the secret code to enter via text.
  • Or how about the next time to your favorite band is in town.... do we really have to deal with the whole Ticketmaster ordeal?  Why can't I send a text to the concert organizer with a simple "Said Band Name" and pay for the price of admission.
  • Here's how it works: Once a mobile user sets up a Seconds account and attaches a payment card, they now can simply pay for the desired product with a one word text to the merchant's Seconds number, in this case it would be the word "Sandwich".  The resulting text a few seconds later will inform the user they indeed have been successfully charged X amount.  Done.
  • So, what about NFC? The problem with NFC technology is you actually have to be in physical proximity for the transaction to work.  The whole point of "Near Field Communication" is touching or swiping your device on a reader which will result in a transaction.  But what happens if I want to pay for something when I am not actually at the specific location or can't get within a few inches of the reader?  What if it's ecommerce, which will become more prevalent as time goes on?  Although it might have its place, it looks as if NFC  underwhelms and under-delivers.
  • That is why we are very excited about our Pay by Text technology, we see a whole new world of payments when you disassociate proximity with transaction.  It's going well right now and the future is looking very bright for Seconds.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Sage Mobile Payments Handles Credit Cards, Signatures And Taxes - 0 views

www.appcraver.com/...g-new-sage-mobile-payments-2-0

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • “While other vendors are fighting over no monthly fees, but higher processing costs for mobile transactions, we’re still saying ‘no’ to mobile transaction surcharges,” said Hammermaster. “With Sage Mobile Payments, businesses have the option to pay no more than they would to process regular credit or debit card transactions on a standard credit card terminal.” 
  • Enhancements built into Sage Mobile Payment 2.0 include an updated user interface, signature capture capabilities, a tax and tip calculator, and a free Sage Mobile “app store” download.
  • “In 2011, 25 percent of worldwide mobile PC shipments were tablets, and upwards of 75 percent U.S. small and midsized businesses plan to purchase tablets in the next year,” said Greg Hammermaster, president of Sage Payment Solutions, the payments division for Sage. “Mobility has truly become a must-have in today’s business world. Businesses using Sage Mobile Payments have a great opportunity to expand their sales and customer service opportunities, and with the confidence of a commercial-grade mobile payments solution. Sage Mobile Payments will help businesses evolve into this next phase of mobile payments.”
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  • New Sage Mobile Payments 2.0 features:One Merchant Account — Businesses can now use their existing Sage Merchant ID (MID) account to add mobile payments to their existing payment solution, and at the same low processing rate.Updated User Interface on Smart Phones — The new, completely intuitive, colorful user interface makes processing payments easier than ever.Signature Capture — Businesses can give customers peace of mind knowing a signature is required to complete their transaction. With the swipe of a finger, a signature is captured to complete a sale. A signed receipt is emailed to both the business and their customer.Tax And Tip Calculator — Businesses no longer need a separate calculator to determine tax due and tips; Sage Mobile automatically calculates both.‘App Store’ Download — By going to the Android Marketplace or Apple’s iTunes store, businesses can download the Sage Mobile application at no cost. Then, once they have called Sage to set up their merchant account, they can start accepting mobile payments.
  • Businesses using Sage Mobile Payments can benefit from increased chances to close sales; anytime, anywhere transactions; a secure and PCI compliant payment processing environment; real-time authorizations for expedited cash flow; and minimal cost.Sage has been providing businesses and organizations with electronic payment systems for more than 20 years. Visit Sage Payment Solutions online at www.sagepayments.com.
  • Sage North America today announced the launch of Sage Mobile Payments 2.0, the latest version of its Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant mobile payments product. Sage Mobile Payments comes bundled with a Sage merchant account, and allows businesses to cost effectively and securely process credit and debit card transactions on mobile devices, like cell phones and tablets, including Apple’s iPad, across all major wireless carriers. Version 2.0 focuses on enhancing the customer experience through new features designed to save businesses time and increase the security of their transactions.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How Visa Plans To Dominate Mobile Payments, Create The Digital Wallet And More | TechCr... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...te-the-digital-wallet-and-more

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • It’s no secret that credit card companies are shelling out big bucks and aggressively forming partnerships and deals to start cashing in on the mobile and digital payments innovations currently taking place. American Express, which recently debuted its own digital payments product Serve, has been particularly aggressive on the partnerships front, striking recent deals with both Foursquare and Facebook. Mastercard has bet on NFC with a partnership with Google for Google Wallet and bought online payments gateway DataCash for $520 million last fall. And Visa has made a number of major moves in the mobile and digital payments space of late; including making an investment (and taking on an advisory role) in disruptive startup Square, buying virtual goods payments platform PlaySpan for $190 million, and acquiring mobile payments company Fundamo for $110 million. We sat down with Visa’s Global Head of Mobile Product Bill Gajda and the company’s Head of Global Product Strategy, Innovation and eCommerce Jennifer Schulz to discuss how the financial company is planning to compete in both mobile and digital payments.
  • In May, Visa announced its plans for the digital wallet. We’ll explain this initiative later in the post, but part of this platform would allow you to access your loyalty points, credit cards and more from your mobile phone at the point of sale. And the third pillar of Visa’s mobile strategy is incorporating value-added services like real-time alerts, contextual services, and offers at point of shopping based on where you are.
  • Gajda explains that Visa is licensing mobile payments applications PayWave for integration with the ISIS wallet and the company is actively looking for other ways to integrate with NFC into the company’s mobile payments structure.
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  • Of course, some aren’t so bullish on NFC, notably eBay (who owns PayPal) CEO John Donohoe, who in a recent earnings call said merchants refer NFC “not for commerce.” And odd statement considering PayPal just dipped its toes in the NFC pool with support for Android.
  • Gajda tells is, “I think for some people NFC will replace the actual physical credit card but it will be a long time before NFC replaces all payments.” He believes that we are going to start seeing more traction by end of this year but says the capability of “taking credit cards and putting them on mobile phones will represent the long tail” in payments. But he adds, “the pieces are in place for NFC to take off.”
  • The second part of the Visa’s mobile strategy involves the digital wallet and the mobile web. Gajda says that as e-commerce ramps up on mobile phones, there is a need for one-click, simple username and password checkout experience in a transaction being made on a mobile device. That’s an area where PayPal has been working hard to dominate in but Visa sees room for other players. Should we expect a PayPal-like, one-click mobile payments technology coming from Visa soon? Perhaps, the company hasn’t been afraid to enter PayPal’s territory in the past, launching a peer to peer payments service earlier this year.
  • Gajda tells us that the biggest challenge of mobile payments in the current market the massive amount of fragmentation in the mobile industry. He explains that with all of the various mobile operating systems, specific manufactured phones, applications and more, keeping up with pace of innovation on the development side is a major challenge for Visa.
  • Visa actually tested a partnership with retailer The Gap earlier this year which alerted customers via SMS of discounts in stores near them. Gajda tells us Visa is working with a number of other retailers and banks on similar deals which will be announced soon.
  • Gajda says there are a number of other factors at play in the mobile payments place that need to be highlighted when talking about mobile payments. International is a huge growth area in mobile payments. He tells is that outside the U.S., there are a large number of people who have mobile phones but don’t have banking relationship or credit card. In fact, he says there are 2 billion people in world that have phone, but don’t have a bank account or credit card.
  • In these markets, Visa’s goal is to bring prepaid accounts, purchasing power and other financial services to basic phones. These could include topping up a mobile phone with airtime, buying transit tickets, peer to peer payments. And this goal was the mean reason behind the purchase of behind the $110 million purchase of Fundamo. The company’s platform delivers mobile financial services to unbanked and under-banked consumers around the world, including person-to-person payments, airtime top-up, bill payment and branchless banking services.
  • Connecting with the small business world that don’t yet use credit cards or are new to the system is another area where Visa feels there is strong potential, especially with mobile payments. That’s why the company invested in disruptive mobile payments company Square and took an advisory role in the company. Gajda says that the power of Square is that it is enabling small businesses and independent workers such as doctors, designer and other merchants to start using credit cards and grow their businesses. It would make sense for Square and Visa would somehow work to harness the power of their partnership (As of April roughly two-thirds of transactions using Square’s payments service were through Visa credit cards.), but it’s unclear what the two companies will reveal any new co-produced products soon.
  • MOBILE Gajda explains that there are three prongs to Visa’s mobile payments strategy. One of these is NFC, and focuses on payments using a mobile phone at a physical store. For background, NFC (near field communications) enables people to make transactions, exchange digital content and connect electronic devices with a simple touch. As we’ve seen with Google Wallet, Android phones such as the Nexus S are being built with NFC chips, making your cell phone a mobile wallet. Visa recently joined the ISIS network, a NFC mobile payment network that is a joint venture formed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. ISIS will soon launch in a number of markets, including Utah and Texas.
  • But he says that there is still so much room for innovation around how we pay with mobile phones. “With the rise of smartphone usage, we are already seeing a lot of innovation around commerce,” he explains. “It’s inevitable that this will extend to the payments around the sales in mobile commerce.”
  • DIGITAL Visa’s digital payments guru Schulz outlined her strategy for digital payments at the company, which centralizes around the creation of the digital wallet. Schulz says that because of the fact that e-commerce is being more easy and convenient with customers, especially with m-commerce, the underlying payments infrastructure has to evolve.
  • And Visa’s answer to this is a new digital wallet initiative. Here’s how it works. Users will have an account, and they can add their credit card numbers (and cards from other credit card companies such as American Express and Mastercard). Visa is partnering with a number of financial institutions to offer this product to their customers.
  • Users can also load their loyalty points and rewards cards, as well as organize their shopping lists. Schulz describes it as a “wallet in the cloud.” But she says the key to the success of the wallet is a seamless, one-click payments experience for the consumers. So Visa has partnered with a number of large-scale retailers (which will be announced soon) to integrate what Schulz refers to as a ‘new acceptance mark’ on a merchant payments page.
  • So there will be a button you can click on, which will prompt you to sign-on and then will sync your digital wallet with the purchase in your shopping cart. So for example, imagine you had a camera in your cart, and Visa offered a 20 percent off at camera’s purchased at BestBuy, the wallet would sync and show the discount in your cart. The same works for loyalty points and more.
  • Visa competitor American Express is also working hard to innovate both at the large retailer level, as well as among smaller retailers, with GoSocial.
  • She compares the digital wallet offering to “two-hand clapping.” ” You can have a digital wallet,” Schulz explains, “but you need a merchant solution of click to buy, and Visa’s going to transform that experience.” And Schulz highlights another recent acquisition, Playspan, has helping drive a simplified commerce experience, a.k.a. click to buy, within game or within app.
  • Of course adding another checkout experience to online retailers’ sites can be a complicated and time-consuming process. But that’s where Visa’s $2 billion acquisition of CyberSource comes in. CyberSource is said to process about 25 percent of all e-commerce dollars transacted in the United States, and operates e-commerce for hundreds of thousands of retailers. Schulz says this relationship has helped speed up the pace of implementation.
  • Creating the digital wallet, both on the mobile and web platforms, is no easy task. Visa has a name for itself in the credit card industry but the fact is that the brand still has to attach innovation to itself in order for people to take these products seriously. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Google’s Mobile Wallet news created waves, even though NFC technology is in its early stages.
  • Schulz explains that the idea behind the wallet is that consumers want control over their wallet and want to have payment information and access available to them at all times. She believes that the digital wallet will click to buy incorporated on retailers’ sites is essential to the future of e-commerce in both the U.S. and emerging markets.
  • While Visa, American Express and others are looking to capitalize on the changes taking place in the payments industry, it is a challenging effort. Local commerce is a big part of this, and everyone is trying to find a way to close the redemption loop. But e-commerce, amongst larger retailers, is also a multi-billion dollar market that Visa hopes to continue to play in with products like a digital wallet. And in-store payments, whether that be through NFC, Square or others, represent another market.
  • I’ve been talking to a number of executives of payments companies and founders of innovative payments startups, and while their objectives are different, they all seem to agree on one thing. It’s early and there is still much more innovation were going to see in the next few years in the online and mobile payments space.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash | TechC... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...ayspan-for-190-million-in-cash

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • PlaySpan, a virtual goods monetization platform, has been acquired by Visa. According to the release, Visa will pay $190 million in cash for the company, plus additional payouts for performance milestones. The deal comes nearly a year after Visa spent a whopping $2 billion on e-payment company CyberSource. Visa says that the acquisition of PlaySpan complements the CyberSource deal and will extend the company’s presence in digital and mobile commerce.
  • This is a big exit for PlaySpan, which has raised a total of $46 million in funding since its launch four years ago. PlaySpan has been growing like a weed, striking partnerships with a number of social network, gaming and media companies, including Viacom, Disney, Facebook, Ubisoft, and Sanrio.
  • PlaySpan’s flagship product UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience. Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks.
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  • The company also recently launched a mobile version of UltimatePay, which gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The mobile focused platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game
  • As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.
  • Visa says that ecommerce sales, which reached an estimated $948 billion, are a big growth area for the company. Approximately 45 percent of U.S. online spending takes place on Visa’s network today and for Visa’s fiscal first quarter 2011, the company reported 25 percent year-over-year growth in ecommerce payment volumes globally. Visa is going to use PlaySpan to capitalize on the growing digital goods market, which generated an estimated $25 billion in consumer spending globally in 2010 and is expected to reach $280 billion by 20143.
  • The acquisition is even more impressive when you conside that the company was founded by 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, in 2006. PlaySpan is actually run by the teenager’s father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Finextra: PayPal aims to become your digital ID; unveils new bank, vendor, currency par... - 0 views

www.finextra.com/...fullstory.aspx

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • PayPal has taken the wraps off its single sign-on digital identity service for online shopping, PayPal Access. The move comes as the San Jose-based payments operator unveils a series of new partnerships with a host of banking technology suppliers at the BAI Retail delivery show in Chicago.
  • PayPal Access is designed to simplify the checkout process by enabling the company's 100 million account holders to sign in at participating retailers' sites with just their PayPal user name and password.
  • The initiative is a key element of X.Commerce, a new division of PayPal parent company eBay, that aims to provide a common set of APIs for building consumer-facing online merchant services.
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  • Commenting on PayPal Access, Damon Hougland, general manager of identity & informatics, X.commerce, says: "Results from early adopters show that consumers are more willing to engage with merchants because they can use their PayPal account to check out instead of having to deal with the hassle of entering name, address and payment information. This has huge implications for mobile commerce and merchant sales among new and existing customers."
  • Separately, PayPal is introducing a series of new relationships with banking technology suppliers as it bids to make it easier for banks to incorporate its services into their offerings. This morning it announced a partnership with NCR and S1 that enables people to make real-time person-to-person payments from cash machines.
  • Other vendors lined up for the PayPal treatment include mobile outfit mFoundry, account opening specialist MeridienLink, community banking vendor BanVue, and airmiles operator ezRezSoftware. The latter partnership envisages the creation of an application that would enable consumers to convert their airmiles points into cash for spending on the Web.
  • Dan Schatt, general manager of financial innovations at PayPal, explains: "With this partnership, airline and other reward programme members will have access to the entire 'catalogue' of merchandise the Internet offers by using their rewards anywhere PayPal is accepted."
  • Set for take-off in 2012, United Airlines' frequent flyer programme, will be the first rewards scheme to allow PayPal account holders to use miles as a currency.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Sony Ericsson Xperia S, An Initial Thoughts Review | ITProPortal.com - 0 views

www.itproportal.com/...eria-s-initial-thoughts-review

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • Contrary to the many rumours in circulation on-line, the ‘Nozomi' or Xperia HD was actually only the codename for the first in the, now only Sony, Xperia range of mobile phones. The Sony Xperia S is now the official name of the device, which was launched this week at Las Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show.
  • Sony has been eager to show off the high definition display of the newest Xperia on the block, with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The phone has two front-facing cameras; one with 12MP camera that is capable of 720p video recording and a front-facing version, for video calling. The Exmor ‘R' sensor also makes a welcome return, which is essentially an image sensor with enhanced imaging characteristics. Introduced to the original Xperia series, this feature helps you to capture high quality, bright pictures especially under poor light conditions. In order to further heighten the camera's specification, there is a 3D-sweep panorama feature and low aperture value - allowing more light to reach the sensor.
  • The Xperia S is also NFC enabled, and offers up 32GB of internal flash storage space, as opposed to the widely considered 8GB that came close to causing mass uproar. The device itself weighs in at 144grams, which is only fractionally more than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This is actually quite impressive, given the bulk of the design
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  • Sony's Xperia S will initially be available with the 2.3.7 version of Android Gingerbread OS at launch, with users being able to upgrade to Android platform 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) during the second quarter of 2012. For reasons unknown, it will be joining an exclusive group of devices which only use a microSIM card, such as the Nokia Lumia 800 and Motorola Razr. This follows the original trendsetters Apple, and their devices. Also, there is no microSD slot; a feature, or lack there of, that many of the newly released handsets are keen to adopt.
  • As we saw with the marketing strategy of the Xperia Arc and Arc S, the company will probably be positioning the Xperia S just below the top devices, aiming to fill the niche right underneath the flagship products of Apple, HTC and Samsung. The ‘S' certainly packs some heavy hardware without overwhelming technical spec, and we believe the price will validate this theory.
  • The Xperia S will arrive PlayStation certified, with access to the PlayStation store and a fast-growing library of music and videos. Despite this, the real benefit of the phone are its ability to take high-resolution photos and videos, whilst being able to view them on the device itself. The idea is to better integrate smart devices, and for them to communicate intelligently.
  • Perhaps a tenuous example of this is the wrist watch worn by the spokesman for Sony Ericsson at CES, who could remotely control the camera and view messages on a tiny screen. It's therefore no surprise that the Xperia S comes with a built-in TV out function, where you can connect via HDMI and enjoy both pictures and videos on the big screen, and in glorious high definition.
  • This will be the inaugural handset, in the batch of the new Xperia NXT series - which stands for NeXT generation of smartphones. The Sony Xperia S has enjoyed no privacy since pictures were leaked back in early December, but it has now been confirmed that it runs from a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 12MP camera and a 4.3-inch screen that uses Sony's mobile Bravia engine.
  • Variants of the Xperia S are also set for launch in the springtime, when the Xperia ion, Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD will be released. The Acro HD will hit the Japanese market with specific features such as infrared port data exchange, mobile wallet and mobile TV.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Irancell demonstrates NFC payments, ticketing - Telecompaper - 0 views

www.telecompaper.com/...strates-nfc-payments-ticketing

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Iranian mobile operator MTN-Irancell teamed up with technology provider Etick Pars Intelligent Technologies Development and Bank Pasargad to demonstrate a number of NFC services such as payments and ticketing designed for the Iranian market, writes online publication NFCWorld.com citing Etick. Etick and Irancell will test a system that enables the recharge of prepaid accounts on NFC mobile wallets by either transferring money from bank accounts or making a cash deposit at a contactless point-of-sale terminal, Etick project manager Bahram Ehsandoust told NFC World. If required, funds may also be transferred back from mobile wallets to bank accounts. Using their NFC mobile wallet, end-users will be able to pay for retail purchases, for bus tickets in the cities of Mashhad and Ahwaz, where Etick runs the current smart card-based public transportation ticketing system, and for purchases from vending machines. At the same time, customer loyalty applications have been developed. Both NFC phones using a SIM as a secure element as well as Gemalto's Upteq N-Flex NFC device support the tested technology.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

NFCNews | MTN Irancell, Etick to test mobile wallet in Iran - 0 views

www.nfcnews.com/...-to-test-mobile-wallet-in-iran

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • MTN Irancell, one of Iran’s mobile operators, has teamed up with Etick Pars Intelligent Technologies and Bank Pasargad to develop a mobile wallet solution for the Iranian Market.
  • According to Telecompaper, Etick and Irancell plan to test a system that will enable customers to make contactless mobile purchases from a prepaid account that can be reloaded through bank transfers or cash deposits at contactless point of sale terminal.
  • The mobile wallet will also support transit ticketing. Starting with buses in Mashad and Ahwaz, which currently operates under a smart card-based ticketing system from Etick, commuters will be able to purchase and redeem transit passes with a tap of their mobile phone.
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  • The partners are also looking to add support for loyalty programs and vending machine purchases.
  • The system is designed to work with an NFC-enabled SIM cards as a secure element, or with Gemalto’s Gemalto’s Upteq N-Flex NFC solution, which can turn standard mobile phones into NFC-enabled devices.
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