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Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Visa Acquires Mobile Financial Services Company Fundamo For $110M In Cash | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • Visa this morning announced that it has agreed to acquire Fundamo, a specialist mobile financial services provider to network operators and financial institutions in developing economies, for $110 million in cash.
  • In a separate announcement, the giant payments technology company said it has entered into a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise, a provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed regions.
  • Here’s how the duo of agreements was pitched: The combination of acquiring Fundamo and expanding the relationship with Monitise will enable Visa to deliver best-in-class mobile financial services and payments capabilities to consumers across the full spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile environments from basic services on simple handsets to more advanced services for smart phone owners.
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  • Privately-held, Cape Town, South Africa-based Fundamo says it boasts more than 50 active mobile financial services deployments across more than 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
  • The combined Visa Fundamo platform will add enhanced functionality and new services to existing mobile financial services subscribers for globally accepted payments solutions.
  • Fundamo’s platform enables the delivery of 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.
  • Fundamo’s deployments currently have a base of more than five million registered subscribers and the potential to reach more than 180 million consumers with mobile financial services.
  • Fundamo CEO Hannes van Rensburg and the executive team will continue to manage current and future Fundamo implementations as members of Visa’s mobile product organization.
  • Monitise and Visa, meanwhile, say they will debut a mobile banking solution in the U.S. for clients of Visa DPS, the company’s debit and prepaid processing platform.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Top 7 Mobile Commerce Trends in 2011 - 0 views

  • 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

PayPal unveils NFC Android-to-Android payments - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • PayPal today unveiled a new peer-to-peer payment functionality that allows Android users to pay each other by tapping two near field communication (NFC)-enabled devices together. The feature, which follows an earlier contactless PayPal payment tool using Bump Technologies, shows how PayPal is gearing up for NFC as part of its larger push on mobile payments.
  • The payments work through a PayPal widget that allows a user to request or send money. A user enters the transaction information and then taps their phone up against another phone also equipped with the same app. After the phones buzz together, the recipient can decide to send or receive money by entering a PIN number.
  • PayPal’s new mobile payment service will only work currently in the U.S. with the Samsung Nexus S from Sprint and T-Mobile but will expand to other Android phones that include NFC functionality in the future. The transactions utilize an encrypted token and don’t access the secure element inside the NFC chip, where payment credentials reside. It appears this is set up for just peer-t0-peer transfers, which is still a big part of PayPal’s mobile payments business.
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  • he company said it is now on pace to do $3 billion in mobile payments this year though much of that is person-to-person transfers using the PayPal app, which don’t yield much revenue for PayPal. Users do not have to pay a transaction fee when payments pull from bank accounts or an existing PayPal balance.
  • In many ways, this is similar to personal transfers PayPal has previously enabled through its mobile app using Bump Technologies. Users are able to send money back and forth by bumping their phones together, a solution that doesn’t rely on NFC. It’s unclear how much of that may have happened through bump payments, so I don’t know how significant person-to-person NFC payments will be. It’s nice to be able to make a payment to someone by just touching phones but, again, it’s not like many PayPal users don’t have that ability now.
  • Shimone Samuel, Product Experience Manager for PayPal Mobile, however, said the NFC solution has fewer steps than bump payments and can be activated even when only one person has launched their widget. Bump payments require both people to have their PayPal mobile app open. He said PayPal turned to NFC because it simplifies P2P payments.
  • “What I’m looking for is what is simplest and easiest for customers and NFC is the simplest way to request money,” he said.
  • The bigger opportunity is in enabling real-world payments as retail and local merchants, something PayPal is still set to unveil later this year. That will be a much bigger deal because it will signal how PayPal will counter moves by Google and its NFC payments initiative, as well as other challengers like Square and the carrier consortium, Isis project. Samuel declined to comment on how PayPal will use NFC specifically at point of sale but he said the company takes every opportunity to learn from its products.
  • PayPal needs to figure out how to tap that market for offline purchases, which is much bigger than than pure online transactions where it’s excelled. So it’s nice that PayPal has enabled some P2P NFC payments, and it’s showing that it’s getting up to speed on NFC. But we’re still waiting to see the real fireworks.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal pitches its wider vision for mobile payments - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • PayPal has been a powerhouse in online payments but it hasn’t really cracked the much bigger market for payments for goods in the real world. Now, the company is starting to show off how it can put all of its components and recent acquisitions together to form a broad tool for mobile payments.
  • PayPal hosted a partner event for retailers yesterday and began explaining how they’ll be able to implement its tools for in-store payments. The big reveal will happen next month at PayPal’s developer conference in San Francisco, but the company showed a glimpse of how it’s marshaling its resources. It’s important for PayPal to step up with a compelling offering because the mobile payments market is getting crowded with options like Square, Google Wallet and upcoming services like Isis from the cellular carriers and digital wallets from credit card companies.
  • Scott Thompson, president of PayPal, said in a blog post the company is looking to be a one-stop shop for merchants to help them address every part of the shopping lifecycle. OK, that’s a bit of jargon, but it means PayPal is going to help push out targeted advertising, help with in-store discovery and improve transactions with a handful of options.
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  • In a video provided by PayPal, it shows how users will be able to walk into a store and check in to a location to unlock discounts and coupons. When a consumer goes to check out, he’ll be able to pay by entering his phone number. That leverages eBay’s purchase of Zong and its carrier billing capabilities, though it’s not clear how much easier or more convenient that is for consumers who pay with a credit card swipe. But it does open up the option to use carrier billing for physical goods in-store, which is good for people without a card, though the question of how large the transactions fees will be is important. Right now, carrier billing fees are still much higher than credit card fees, which might deter some merchants.
  • Users will also be able to scan items in-store and pay for them with PayPal without having to get in line. Customers can just flash their phone to an employee who will confirm the purchase. This is very much like AisleBuyer and it sounds like PayPal is looking to bring this to restaurant bills as well, something Thompson hinted at in his blog post. This is a cool step that makes sense for people who want to get in and out quickly.
  • Customers will be able to apparently pay ahead for coffee ahead of time and pick it up. Users will also be able to choose how they pay for something after the purchase with PayPal Credit, which seems to leverage eBay’s BillMeLater. All of this appears to work through PayPal’s mobile application and doesn’t seem to require any new investments by merchants. That’s a big concern for mobile payments built on near field communication, which requires many businesses to upgrade their point-of-sale terminals to handle contactless payments.
  • The new mobile payment tools don’t appear to include NFC payments. PayPal recently introduced person-to-person payments using NFC on Android devices, but the company told me at the time it was just focusing NFC on P2P payments. It sounds like PayPal is trying to work around the hardware constraints of NFC payments at point of sale.
  • Other shopping features on display included the ability to get push notifications for discounts that can be shared, which appears to build off eBay’s acquisition of WHERE. Consumers will also be able to scan an item in store and find inventory at other locations, something eBay got from its RedLaser and Milo pick-ups.
  • It’s unclear how soon all of this will come together and how many merchants will sign on. But providing a complete service for retailers and businesses to not only push out offers and discounts but also complete the transactions makes sense. Merchants can close the loop on transactions and understand how their marketing is doing. This is essentially what Google is trying to do with Google Wallet and Offers though it’s focusing primarily on facilitating targeted marketing, rather than taking a cut of transactions.
  • PayPal’s payment initiative is part of eBay’s broader commerce platform called X.commerce, which it’s building off the acquisition of Magento.
  • But there’s also a lot of questions to be answered. For instance, will consumers find this more convenient than a card swipe? Will PayPal make it any easier for people to set-up and manage accounts? Do all of these parts work well together in one solution? And how aggressive will PayPal be in selling this to merchants and consumers? I’ll be interested to hear more and I think PayPal can be a big contender if it gets its execution right. This is going to be a big market but it will require not only great tools but a lot of smart selling to consumers and merchants.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

MasterCard + Intel: The Confluence of Tech and Payments Industries [14Nov11] - 0 views

  • MasterCard, the longtime credit card and payments processor, wants to reposition itself as a technology company. Throughout the latter half of 2011, it has been pushing hard on the technosphere to make sure that journalists and bloggers know the company is doing some cool stuff around payments research and the cutting edge of technology, like NFC, audio signals and QR codes that can lead to purchases through smartphones.
  • It now comes as no surprise that MasterCard has announced a partnership with Intel on a multi-year strategic partnership that is intended to enhance the security and payment experience for digital commerce. These are two titans in the tech and financial industries and shows one of the first steps of these two industries merging in the future.
  • Making A Dent In The 85%
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  • According to the joint press release, the initial focus of the MasterCard and Intel partnership will be on MasterCard's PayPass payments hardware and Intel's Identity Protection Technology (IPT). The idea will be to make a faster, more secure transaction with a just a click or a tap of a card or smartphone through the NFC capabilities of PayPass.
  • There are larger currents in motion here than just creating better transactions hardware. According to MasterCard, 85% of transactions are still done in cash. The company's goal is to make a dent in that number. Even a half a percentage point change towards digital purchases could mean hundreds of millions of extra dollars flowing towards the payment processing industry. This is why MasterCard is repositioning itself not just as a payments firm, but as a technology company.
  • Convergence Of Tech & Payments
  • In 2011 there have been a multitude of partnerships made between tech and financial companies. A lot of the movement has to do with the emerging model of mobile payments, especially into the physical (not Web-based) world. The biggest one is probably the Google Wallet initiative, that has a wide group of companies in its early rolls (and more to come), including Google, Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and various NFC makers. There is also the Isis project that brings the other three carriers, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to bear with NFC capabilities. Last week American Express announced a $100 million fund to help fund e-commerce projects. While mobile will be a huge focus for this convergence between tech and financial, it is not the only push.
  • Square is pushing itself into the mainstream with deals with Wal-Mart, the carriers and Apple while Intuit has made partnerships with both Verizon and AT&T with an eye towards pushing its GoPayment dongle and QuickBooks infrastructure at small businesses. PayPal wants to be two things at once, both a technology leader and a payments company and has been making a lot of horizontal movements in the sector as well.
  • This is not just about the financial industry moving towards technology, the way MasterCard is trying to do it. The technology industry is equally as fervent to moves towards payments. Jack Dorsey, one the founders of Twitter, is probably the best example of this. He saw earlier than most that mobile was changing the entire tech industry and that payments would be a huge part of that. Hence, he started Square, one of the first pillars of the bridge that is being built between the two industries.
  • Both Apple and Google have been making pushes into payments. Apple has hundreds of millions of credit cards on file to support its iTunes model where as Google Checkouts has been positioned to be the de facto purchasing solution for Android apps.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Google Wallet goes live with NFC payments - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • Google is finally opening up its near field communication payment system, Google Wallet, today to the public, allowing Nexus S users on Sprint to try out contactless payments through their smartphone. It’s a little later than originally expected and again, with only one handset that supports it, Google Wallet is just the first step in a long process.
  • But it’s a significant one that begins a much broader effort by Google to change both the way people pay for goods in the real world and interact with merchants and retailers. Toward that end, Google announced today that it has struck deals with American Express, Visa and Discover so their cards will also be integrated into future versions of Google Wallet. Initially, Google Wallet launched with MasterCard as its first partner. But now, banks that issue cards through Visa and Discover will soon be able to load up their accounts directly on to Google Wallet.
  • For Google, the wallet initiative signals a new opportunity to market deals and discounts to consumers and allows merchants a new way to reach consumers and strengthen their relationships with them through discounts and loyalty programs. And it enables them to close the loop on transactions, so they can see how effective their marketing is.
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  • That’s what Google is really interested in: Taking a slice of the revenue that comes from increased Google Offers that can be redeemed through Google Wallet. It’s also one reason why the search giant is not taking a cut of the transactions. Instead, Google is trying to exploit the big opportunity in local advertising, taking NFC along for the ride. As an early incentive, Google is throwing in a $10 credit for users to try out Google Wallet this year.
  • Google Wallet in tandem with Google Offers is going to be a big venture in a market that will be hotly contested. Isis, a rival NFC payment system led by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile is also preparing to launch early next year. I recently wrote about PayPal unveiling the first glimpse of its offline payment solution, which won’t leverage NFC. Square, a hot start-up, is also capitalizing on the opportunity with mobile card readers, an iPad cash register system and a digital wallet for consumers. The credit card companies themselves are also pushing their own digital wallet programs. This is going to be a crowded market and all these companies, along with a host of smaller competitors, are going to trying to make good on this opportunity in mobile payments.
  • Google Wallet, if you recall from the big unveil in May, is a joint venture with MasterCard, Citi, Sprint and First Data. Users can connect their MasterCard Citibank cards to Google Wallet or load up funds on to a prepaid card in Google Wallet from other credit debit cards.
  • Users can make payments at any terminal equipped with MasterCard’s contactless PayPass technology. Google has struck a bunch of partnerships with retailers and restaurants, who will support Google Wallet and incorporate their own loyalty programs into it. In some of these cases, retailers need to work to enable or upgrade their point of sale systems to handle Google Wallet integration. Partners include Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Walgreens, Subway, American Eagle Outfitters, Peet’s and others.
  • There’s still many questions around Google Wallet. Google said it’s talking to other carriers and manufacturers about supporting Google Wallet and including NFC integration, but right now, there are no other Google Wallet handsets to announce. It’s also unclear when other bank cards will be supported directly in Google Wallet though Google said it is talking to banks about adding that functionality. But Google has pitched its wallet as an open platform that anyone can participate in, so the system will no doubt evolve over time.
  • Google still has a long ways to go to pitch consumers on the benefits of paying by phone. As we’ve noted, many consumers are happy paying with a card. Merchants also need to see a reason to step up and make an investment in next generation hardware that can support contactless payments. This is going to take a lot of selling and a good narrative for both parties. Google hasn’t embraced big marketing campaigns in the past though it has enlisted the help of actor Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame to help tease Google Wallet. It’s going to need a lot more of that mojo to make sure Google Wallet can realize the company’s ambitions.
Dan R.D.

Badgeville looks beyond gamification, launches a behavior platform - Tech News and Anal... - 0 views

  • Badgeville has been synonymous with gamification, the idea of incorporating game mechanics to motivate employees and consumers to do specific tasks. But the company says it’s not stopping with gamification; it sees a future in shaping behavior through a combination of game mechanics, private social networks and reputation and rank.
  • building off its Social Fabric technology that allows any website to build a social network out of its community using a new behavior graph. The behavior graph helps track a user’s interaction within a social context on any site, application or product.
  • provide corporate clients with a suite of services that can help them apply “behavior management” to their own employees or consumers.
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  • We think there’s a new category called behavior management. Individual things such as analytics, social, gamification, private label social networks. It’s all scratching this issue. We focus on how to turn it all into a platform that allows any type of company, anyone with an audience, to use these techniques for user behavior.
  • The new behavior platform will potentially pit Badgeville against some enterprise social networking tools like Chatter, Yammer and others. But Duggan said it’s also working to integrate with those services so the behavior platform can incorporate actions on these channels into its larger reputation and rank system.
  • The company, which launched a year ago, raised $12 million in July.
Dan R.D.

Does Twitter have more influence than Facebook? | Media | guardian.co.uk [07Nov11] - 0 views

  • You hear things about Facebook. You see things. As its audience matures, a subtle shift might be under way. Of course, numbers remain staggering. Facebook is heading toward the 800 million users mark, mostly by conquering new markets. The growth is distributed as follows: Middle-East Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America grow by about 60% a year; Europe by 35% to 40%; and North America by 25%.
  • It now seems Facebook's usage is undergoing a split. Active Facebookers become increasingly engaged, spend more time doing more stuff, while "reasonable" users (over 25) become more reluctant and careful.
  • older people are joining in western markets, while a younger audience grows in emerging ones. More changes are under way as the internet spreads on both landlines and mobile devices: over the past three years, China added more internet users than exist in the US today. Furthermore, in the fastest growing markets, Facebook captures more than 90% of all social network traffic. So, for the near future, Facebook doesn't have a growth problem.
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  • Who benefits from such shift? Twitter, primarily. Globally, Twitter's microblogging/social network is much smaller than Facebook, with a reported 200 million users, only a fraction of which are really active. Business-wise, Facebook is 30 times larger than Twitter and is expected to gross $4.27bn this year, according to eMarketer ultra-precise estimates; that's more than twice last year's revenue. As for Twitter, its advertising strategy is gaining traction: again, eMarketer expects Twitter to make $139.5m, up 210% from the previous year.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Apple Streamlines Real World Shopping With Mobile Self-Checkout [08Nov11] - 0 views

  • For those of us who have grown accustomed to purchasing things from our laptops, tablets and smartphones, the experience of walking into a physical store and standing in line can get tiresome. It's hard to top the immediacy and convenience of online and mobile shopping. Yet, there are still plenty of items that are best purchased in person.
  • Apple hopes to bridge the gap between these digital and physical worlds. The company just released an update to its Apple Store app for iOS. Using the application, customers can not only purchase Apple products like they can on the Apple website, but they can now opt to pick them up in person at one of the company's many retail locations.
  • The app can also be used as a sort of self check-out scanner for certain accessories in Apple stores. Need a new case for your iPhone or a power adaptor for your MacBook? Now you can scan the item with your phone's camera, pay for it in the app and be on your way.
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  • This model offers a glimpse of one version of what the future of commerce may look like. E-commerce is infinitely more convenient for certain things, but sometimes consumers still need to see and try a product in person, whether it's a MacBook Air or a pair of jeans.
  • For retailers, offering a mobile app that alleviates some of the pain of real world, bricks-and-mortar shopping can provide a competitive advantage on digital platforms without cannibalizing physical in-store sales. Mix in location-based offers and coupons and the incentive for consumers to swing by the store is even greater.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

  • 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

Google Ventures Takes A Sip Of Milk, Invests In Kevin Rose's New Startup | TechCrunch [... - 0 views

  • Google Maps is a big part of Milk’s first mobile app, Oink. And Rose wants to build in more Google technology in future updates.
  • Oink lets people rate and discover things in the places around them. It is a first step at creating a directory and recommendation system for things in the physical world.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Daring Fireball: Apps Are the New Channels [28Oct11] - 0 views

  • Whether Newsstand was Apple’s strategy all along, I don’t know, but I think it might have been. The app is the unit of distribution for newspapers and magazines, not the “issue” or the “article”. This puts more work on the publishers’ shoulders — they need to design, create, and maintain software, not merely publish content — but it gives them more control over the reader experience and more potential for creativity and differentiation.
  • Why not the same thing for TV channels? We’re seeing the beginnings of this, with iPhone and iPad apps like HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and the aforementioned Bloomberg TV+. Letting each TV network do their own app allows them the flexibility that writing software provides. News networks can combine their written and video news into an integrated layout. Networks with contractual obligations to cable operators, like HBO and ESPN, can write code that requires users to log in to verify their status as an eligible subscriber.
  • Why not the same thing for TV sized displays? Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. You could ask the HBO app which other movies this actress has been in. Point is: it’d be better for both viewers and the networks1 if a TV “channel” were an interactive app rather than a mere single stream of video.
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  • Collect them in a Newsstand-like folder on iPhones and iPads, and make them the “home screen” of a future Apple TV.
  • Better for advertisers, too. Apps allow for fairly exact viewership statistics. There’d be no need for Nielsen-style statistical polling if exact analytics are available.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

NFC Mobile Advertising Startup Tapit Raises Seed Funding | TechCrunch [29Aug11] - 0 views

  • Tapit is a new mobile advertising startup, founded in March 2011, that enables content sharing and offer delivery simply by tapping an NFC-enabled phone anywhere the Tapit logo can be found.
  • The company has now raised a seed funding round from Sydney Angels in record time – just 22 days from the pitch until the round was subscribed for. This is the fastest investment to date for Sydney Angels, the not-for-profit membership organization for angels which typically invests in Sydney-based startups.
  • NFC (near field communication), a short-range wireless technology, is often associated with mobile payments and mobile wallets these days, as a new way to enable purchases at point-of-sale. But that’s only one of the many possible use cases for the technology, which can also support things like sharing files and media between devices, advertising, ticketless transactions and more. It can even be used to perform actions like those found in NTT DOCOMO’s nifty “tap to follow” offering that lets two Twitter users follow each other simply by tapping phones.
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  • With Tapit, however, the idea is to leverage NFC for use in marketing campaigns by working with agencies, brands, handset manufacturers and carriers. Its marketing services include mobile commerce, coupon distribution, ticketing, surveys and reviews, content delivery, competitions and social community building (e.g. tap here to “like” us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter).
  • Says Tapit CEO Jamie Conyngham, “the speed in which this round was closed is an endorsement of the Tapit team and the business models we have created around our unique NFC enabled technology. Everyone we meet loves the idea of Tapit, it’s addictive.”
  • NFC, indeed, would be a step up from the now-ubiquitous barcode scanning technology, which involves using smartphone apps to scan QR codes via the phone’s camera. Unfortunately, NFC generally requires an accompanying chip built into the phone itself. Due to this requirement, it’s currently being held back by the limited availability of supported handsets.
  • Still, analysts are bullish on NFC’s future, with ABI predicting over 35 million supported handsets by 2012 and Frost & Sullivan estimating around 868 million by 2015.
  • Terms of Tapit’s seed investment were not disclosed, but the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund typically invests between $100K – $500K in its portfolio companies.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon give Isis mobile payment network a $100 million boost -- Eng... - 0 views

  • How do you compete with Google's new Wallet mobile payment system? Well, a $100 million cash infusion certainly couldn't hurt. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have plans to invest just that amount in Isis, sources told Businessweek. That sum is likely to grow, since taking on Google is no small feat, especially considering Wallet is already off the ground, with nationwide retail partners and support for MasterCard PayPass. Though Isis first made its debut last year, Google Wallet, which was announced in May, has clearly taken the lead. Isis is little more than a top-level website at this point, though with three of the nation's largest carriers providing support, it could have a chance to catch up -- especially if the carriers elect not to partner with Google, leaving Sprint as the sole wireless provider. We're glad to see some potential healthy competition for Wallet, especially considering that it was looking like Google was poised to create a monopoly. We expect much more to come on the Isis front, but in the meantime, hold on to those wallets -- cell phone payments may be in your future, but for now, paper and plastic are where it's at.
Dan R.D.

Adobe kills mobile Flash, giving Steve Jobs the last laugh | Technology | guardian.co.u... - 0 views

  • Mobile Flash is being killed off.
  • The plugin that launched a thousand online forum arguments and a technology standoff between Apple and the format's creator, Adobe, will no longer be developed for mobile browsers, the company said in a note that will accompany a financial briefing to analysts.
  • Instead the company will focus on development around HTML5 technologies, which enable modern browsers to do essentially the same functions as Flash did but without relying on Adobe's proprietary technologies, and which can be implemented across platforms.
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  • In "Thoughts on Flash", an open letter published by Jobs in April 2010, he asserted that "Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short."New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How Natural Language Processing Helps Uncover Social Media Sentiment [08Nov11] - 0 views

  • NLP goes by many names — text analytics, data mining, computational linguistics — but the basic principle remains the same. NLP refers to computer systems that process human language in terms of its meaning.
  • Apart from common word processor operations that treat text like a mere sequence of symbols, NLP considers the hierarchical structure of language: several words make a phrase, several phrases make a sentence and, ultimately, sentences convey ideas. By analyzing language for its meaning, NLP systems have long filled useful roles, such as correcting grammar, converting speech to text and automatically translating between languages.
  • NLP can analyze language patterns to understand text. One of the most compelling ways NLP offers valuable intelligence is by tracking sentiment — the tone of a written message (tweet, Facebook update, etc.) — and tag that text as positive, negative or neutral.
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  • Much can be gleaned from sentiment analysis. Companies can target unhappy customers or, more importantly, find their competitors’ unhappy customers, and generate leads. I like to call these discoveries “actionable insights” — findings that can be directly implemented into PR, marketing, adverting and sales efforts.
  • As with most computer systems, NLP technology lacks human-level intelligence, at least for the foreseeable future. On a text-by-text basis, the system’s conclusions may be wrong — sometimes very wrong.
  • Finally, much of social media interaction is personal, expressed between two people or among a group. Much of the language reads in first or second person (“I,” “you” or “we”). This type of communication directly contrasts with news or brand posts, which are likely written with a more detached, omniscient tone.
  • NLP is a tool that can help move your business forward by providing insight into the minds of your target audience members. However, it is not meant to replace human intuition. In social media environments, NLP helps cut through noise and vast amounts of data to help brands understand audience perception, and therefore, to determine the most strategic response.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

A Coke Machine, A Dorm Room, A Gate: How NFC Will Be Adopted [11Nov11] - 0 views

  • Whenever people think of near field communications, they think of mobile payments. Your phone becomes your wallet and spending money becomes as easy as tap, tap, tapping all day. Well, the era of your tap-able digital wallet is not here yet. It may never come. But that does not mean there are not some very interesting uses of NFC coming down the pipeline.
  • For instance, there was a Coca-Cola vending machine at ad:tech this week that was tied to Google Wallet. Tap, tap, tap away and take a Diet Coke Break. At Nokia World there as a gate that could be opened with a tap from your phone. A developer is working on NFC solutions to help his father who has Alzheimer's. NFC could be great as a monetary transfer solution, but there is so much more.
  • Groundswell To An NFC Enabled World
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  • A couple of months ago we wrote about a pilot program at Arizona State University gives students NFC-enabled phones that can be used to access dormitories and university buildings. At the time we said that this is the perfect place for the widespread use of NFC to start: universities have long been known to be the birthplace of behavior-changing trends.
  • Let's look at the NFC Coca Cola machine. This is actually the second time that we have run across one of these prototypes (note: we were not at ad:tech this week but found this story from Mobile Commerce Daily). The first time we saw one of these Coke machines was at a reception around mobile payments from MasterCard in New York City a couple of months ago. It functioned just like any other Coke machine, except it accepted money through NFC. Make your selection and tap on the receiver instead of digging through your pocket for change.
  • "The combination of mobile commerce and location technology moves our business from the point of sale to the point of thirst," said Wendy Clark, SVP of integrated marketing communications and capabilities Coca Cola according to Mobile Commerce Daily. "We have to place bets and we have to take risks if we want to feel innovation in the way that we market."
  • We may see groundswell coming from the big brands that are looking to change how they interact with customers. NFC is not going to be adopted because the big corporations like Google make partnerships with other big corporations in the mobile and financial worlds and all of a sudden we are going to change how we go about our day-to-day lives just because they tell us so. The act of buying a Coke is one of the simplest and most straightforward acts in all of society. If you see that your friend just paid for a Coke at a vending machine with her smartphone, you are much more likely to go, "hey, I wonder if I can do that to." Once you have your foot in the door, you are more likely to use that process again.
  • Adapting Technology To The Situation
  • During Nokia World in London I met a developer that wanted to explore NFC because his father has Alzheimer's and he wanted to figure out how the technology could help him give his father a way to manage his day-to-day life. For instance, setting timers on items around the house to keep his father from doing odd things at odd moments, like opening cabinets in the kitchen at 4:00 a.m. or leaving the house at the same time and wandering the neighborhood, not knowing where he is going. If his father has a watch with NFC in it, he could program those household functions to only respond to the NFC timer at certain times of the day.
  • Think of it: this is how NFC will evolve. Consumers are not going to be bludgeoned from on high by companies like Google, Sprint and MasterCard. It will start as a groundswell where developers see a problem, solve a problem. Big brands, like Coca Cola or Wal-Mart, will start instituting NFC solutions and people will become familiar with the technology first. It is one thing for Google to have a big demo, roll out a bunch of partners and say "this is the future." It is another for people to actually have the technology in their hands, using it to do a variety of activities.
  • Even the Google Wallet competitor, ISIS, thinks that competition is good for the realm. In an interview with CNET, ISIS CEO Michael Abbott said, "competition is what this space needs." Why would he say something like that? Because Abbott understands that people learn from other people and that the more solutions there are out there for people to see the technology in action, the more will ultimately adopt it. Competition drives innovation and better products in consumers' hands. In that way, the technology adapts to the situation, not the situation to the technology.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

German Rail System to Get Mobile Payments This Year [26Aug11] - 0 views

  • Come November, the world's second largest mass transit company will let its riders pay for trips by waving their cell phones at the terminal. The Deutsche Bahn, Germany's main railway operator, began implementing its Touch&Travel mobile payments system in 2008 and expects it to be ready within two months.
  • The system will rely on near field communications (NFC) chips contained in customers' mobile phones to handle the payment transactions for each trip. Alternatively, riders can pay with their phones by scanning a QR code at the beginning and end point of their ride.
  • Touch&Travel mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android-based smart phones. "In addition to using NFC or barcodes to provide location information, smartphone apps can use GPS or the user can type in a location ID number," writes NFC World. Riders will be billed for their transit usage at the end of each month.
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  • Contact-less payments are just one of the many uses for NFC, which is one of the most-talked-about technologies of the last year. Some other use cases include exchanging contact information, mobile gaming and unlocking doors, to name a few. Still, mobile payments are perhaps the most anticipated of its future uses, as everybody from banks and credit card companies to Google and smaller tech startups have been preparing solutions in this space.
  • New York City's transit system started its own pilot program for mobile payments last year, which lets riders pay for trips with their iPhones. Since the iPhone does not yet support NFC natively, the devices need to be housed in a special casing in order to work with New York's subway, rail, bus and taxi systems.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Jiepang to deliver NFC check-ins and rewards to Chinese merchants * NFC World [26Aug11] - 0 views

  • China's leading location-based social service is distributing NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchants in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong
  • Jiepang is to distribute NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchant partners in six cities in Greater China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong.
  • Jiepang is China's leading location-based social service. Its users currently check in and earn rewards via a GPS-enabled smartphone app which comes preloaded on all new HTC, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other smartphone brands in China, including all three of the new Nokia NFC smartphones announced earlier this week.
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  • Consumers use the service to check in to locations as well as to share tips, photos and comments. The system also automatically sends this information to a number of social networking platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook as well as local networks, so that friends and followers are notified whenever a Jiepang user checks in to a particular merchant.
  • Jiepang provides its fast growing network of merchant partners with a self-service platform they can use to provide offers to Jiepang users who check in to their locations, Leo Lee, Jiepang's marketing and business development manager in Hong Kong, has told NFC World.
  • The platform allows merchants to both choose the type of offer they wish to provide and set their offers so that rewards are triggered according to the kind of user actions they want to see. A reward can be offered, for example, each time a user checks in or only when they have checked in, say, three times during a set period of time.
  • Jiepang doesn't charge merchants for using the platform, and it doesn't plan to change this in the future, Lee added. The company's revenues, instead, come from partnerships Jiepang has established with brands such as Starbucks, McDonald's, Nike, Louis Vuitton and nearly 300 others. These enable the brands to use Jiepang "to reach, engage, and learn about their customers in both the offline and online worlds."
  • NFC offers a number of advantages over GPS to both users and merchants, Lee told NFC World. "NFC is a lot easier and convenient" for users, he says, and merchant partners can be sure that, when a user checks in, they really are present at their store. "GPS is not 100% accurate, you can be a few streets away," explains Lee.
  • The new service means that NFC phone users will be able to simply touch their phone to a window sticker in order to check in to a location and register their eligibility for a reward. Then, once they have fulfilled the criteria for a given reward, a mobile coupon for that merchant will be delivered to their phone. Jiepang users then simply show the coupon to the merchant in order to redeem it. Once accepted, the merchant voids the coupon by pressing an on-screen 'void' button on the customers' phone.
  • "NFC has a lot of possibilities for mobile commerce," says Lee. "We want to help small, medium and local merchants to use our platforms."
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