Skip to main content

Home/ Open Intelligence / Web 3X (Social + Mobile)/ Group items tagged google

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Dan R.D.

Google News Badges Are Achievements for Reading the News [22Jul11] - 0 views

www.geekosystem.com/google-news-badges

1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 22 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Google News has recently rolled out its Badges program and entered the world of meaningless digital rewards. Get excited. From now on, if you have a Google account, log in and enable your web history before reading articles on Google News, you will accrue what are basically experience points (my words, not theirs) which will unlock badges and eventually cause those badges to “level up” (their words, not mine) from bronze to silver, gold, platinum and finally “ultimate.” Badges are related to certain subjects and level up based on articles read about that subject. For instance, to use the example from the instructional video, if you read articles about basketball, you will level up your basketball badge. While you might expect a news-site achievement program to stop there, Google has gone the extra mile to implement a balancing effect. Gorging on a whole bunch of articles in one day won’t earn you as much xp as reading a moderate amount on a regular basis. Pavlovian conditioning much?
  • There is also, of course, a social networking application to be had here. Badges are automatically set to private but can be shared with friends.
  • There is something slightly juvenile about the concept of giving away badges for reading the news, and something condescending about Google giving you gold stars for browsing their websites, and you know what? I don’t care.
Dan R.D.

The Gamification of News | THE SOCIAL CMO Blog [31Jul11] - 0 views

www.thesocialcmo.com/...the-gamification-of-news

1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 31 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • his week Google announced the launch of their Google News Badges. Google heralded the launch with the following description: The U.S. Edition of Google News now lets you collect private, sharable badges for your favorite topics. The more articles you read on Google News, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself, or show them off to your friends.
  • Similarly, Google has created a way to make some fun and competition out of what you already do – that is, read the news. They’ve created categories with badges that allow you to level up and share your achievements if you wish. But, being acutely aware of many peoples’ need for privacy, they’ve also given you the option to turn the feature off. To me, this still makes it a viable system because there’s an element of self-competition here as well. We all like to see our own achievements, whether or not we want to share them with the world.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Mobile payment apps work to make wallets obsolete - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Late last month, I ordered the beverage at Sightglass Coffee in SoMa, grabbed it from the counter and walked out without cracking my wallet.
  • Nobody chased me down because, when I first approached the cafe, the Card Case app on my iPhone detected the store's perimeter and automatically switched on. It broadcast my picture to the barista, who could then tap my pre-entered credit card number to cover the bill. The phone never had to leave my pocket.
  • It felt a lot like buying in the one-click environments of iTunes or Amazon, which is to say it didn't feel like buying at all. Square, the San Francisco startup behind the app, has come close to replicating the frictionless online buying experience in the brick-and-mortar world.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • "What we wanted to focus on was removing the mechanics of the transaction and building the relationship between the merchant and customer," said Megan Quinn, director of products at Square, which occupies space at the Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission streets.
  • But, of course, Square isn't the only company working hard to crack the nut of mobile payments - and they all face considerable challenges.
  • Google, Visa, MasterCard, VeriFone, eBay's PayPal division and a joint venture among AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are attacking the problem in various ways. In most cases, those businesses are going a different direction than Square, employing near field communications (NFC) technology that allows people to tap their phone near a terminal to make a payment.
  • Done right, mobile payments can accelerate the monetary exchange, while streamlining the issuance, acceptance and storage of receipts, coupons and loyalty cards. Down the road - once consumer and retail use reaches critical mass - the hope is that people will be able to leave their wallets at home altogether.
  • But there's a chicken and egg paradox: Customers won't start using mobile payments in great numbers until they're accepted in great numbers, and retailers don't have a huge incentive to roll these systems out until customers are clamoring to pay this way.
  • There are only about 150,000 retailers nationwide that accept payments over MasterCard's NFC-based Paypass readers. Google's Wallet payment app works with this system, and industry rumors suggest the next iPhone might as well.
  • Square, which has so far focused on small merchants has about 20,000 that accept Card Case.
  • Another big challenge is human inertia. To get people to download apps, key in credit card numbers and transform a habit they're very comfortable with, mobile payments will have to represent more than a little improvement over what they do today.
  • "You have to offer them a compelling reason to do it," said David Mangini, an IBM executive focused on mobile payments. "At a very, very minimum ... it has to be just as convenient, just as broadly accepted and just as safe."
  • One of the big knocks on basic NFC payments is that tapping a phone near a reader doesn't represent a whopping improvement over swiping a card. In addition, merchants have little to gain by replacing one expensive payment infrastructure with another, some observers say.
  • "It doesn't upset the status quo," said Nick Holland, senior analyst at Yankee Group. "It doesn't really change the original business model and it all goes through the same rails."
  • Receipts, deals Google argues that its NFC-based Wallet app is a big step forward for a few reasons. A single tap replaces not just the payment, but also the exchange of receipts, coupons and loyalty points.
  • On top of that, Google believes it's tying together the on- and off-line retail worlds, by allowing consumers to move the deals they spot on the Web into the Wallet app, where they can redeem them in the real world. Google Wallet also advertises nearby deals when users open up the app.
  • "For the consumer, it's really about tap, pay and save," said Osama Bedier, vice president of payments at Google. "On the merchant side, it's about closing the loop on that advertising."
  • This is a critical goal for Google, too, as it experiences slowing growth in online advertising - 93 percent of commerce still occurs offline, according to Forrester Research
  • For its part, Square steers around the limitations of NFC - as well as the various roadblocks of wireless carriers and credit processing networks - by leveraging the powers of the Internet to process payments. The credit card information is stored online, in Square's secure cloud, not on the device itself.
  • Square, which started by providing small attachments that allow merchants to swipe credit cards using mobile devices, acts as the merchant of record for its customers. This allows the businesses to quickly start accepting credit cards without going through the usual drawn out and expensive process of applying for a merchant account. But it also clearly puts more risk onto Square's shoulders.
  • Square turned on the hands-free feature on its Card Case app, which takes advantage of the so-called geofencing capabilities in the latest version of Apple's mobile software, in an upgrade to the app in November. The feature is only available on Apple devices to date
  • Quinn said "automatic tabs" represents an obvious improvement over traditional payments and it's quickly driving user growth (though the company doesn't disclose user numbers).
  • In addition, retailers have seen revenue leap as much as 20 percent since integrating the app. It drives traffic by highlighting nearby establishments, and the ease of payment encourages customer loyalty, the company says. Tips also tend to go up.
  • Is it safe? But the question that has dogged Square - and indeed hangs over much of the mobile payment space - is security.
  • Early last year, VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron blasted Square - its attention-grabbing young competitor - for what he called serious security flaws. In an online video, he argued that any bad actor could use the Square dongle and an easy-to-create app to skim credit card numbers.
  • Square CEO Jack Dorsey, also the co-founder of Twitter, defended the company's security practices in a letter. He also highlighted the inherent insecurity of credit cards, noting that any sketchy waiter is equally free to steal your information.
  • Meanwhile, Quinn argued that Card Case is actually more secure than credit cards because it only works if you're in the location and your face matches the picture that pops up on the merchant's screen.
  • The radio technology behind NFC has taken some security lumps, too.
  • Late last month, a security researcher at a Washington, D.C., conference used a wireless reader she bought on eBay to highlight some weaknesses of radio frequency identification, Forbes reported. She pulled the critical data from an RFID-enabled credit card through a volunteer's clothing, encoded that data onto a blank card and put it to use onstage.
  • Holland said that any new form of payment inevitably creates new forms of fraud. The challenge will be to educate consumers and merchants about how to minimize the risks.
  • "Clearly, having a device always with you and connected is a very inviting target for criminals," he said. "Any safe is only as strong as the key."
Dan R.D.

Google's New Algorithm Update Impacts 35% Of Searches [03Nov11] - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...-update-impacts-35-of-searches

search google 1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 03 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Today, Google announced a change to its search algorithm that the company says will impact 35% of Web searches. The change builds on top of its previous “Caffeine” update in order to deliver more up-to-date and relevant search results, specifically those in areas where freshness matters. This includes things like recent events, hot topics, current reviews and breaking news items. Google says that the new algorithm knows that different types of searches have different freshness needs, and weighs them accordingly. For example, a search for a favorite recipe posted a few years ago may still be popular enough to rank highly, but searches for an unfolding news story or the latest review of the iPhone 4S should bring the newer, fresher content first, followed by older results.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

www.readwriteweb.com/...oom_a_gate_how_nfc_will_be.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • 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

NFC will be incorporated into one in five smartphones by 2014 - IT News from V3.co.uk [... - 0 views

www.v3.co.uk/...-incorporated-smartphones-2014

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 25 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Near-field communications (NFC) technology will be built into one in five smartphones by 2014 as mobile payment and interactive promotions take off, according to a report from Juniper Research.
  • Over 23 million NFC-capable smartphones are expected to be in circulation by the end of 2011, said the NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments report.
  • This willl rise to around 300 million by 2014, and half of these devices are expected to be active in the US.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The technology is predicted to generate high revenues, explained Howard Wilcox​, senior analyst at Juniper Research.
  • "NFC-based services in North America will account for nearly $47bn, or 41 per cent of the total, by 2016. The Far East and China ($31bn or 27 per cent) and Western Europe ($23bn or 20 per cent) will follow," he said.
  • However, Wilcox warned that there are still significant infrastructure challenges, and institutions including banks and merchants will need to have sufficient point-of-sale readers installed.
  • The Google Nexus S was the first smartphone to ship with NFC technology, but the hardware has seen limited use in the UK so far.
  • Google is to start trialling NFC services in US this summer, and O2 is expected to roll out a mobile wallet application in the UK this year.
  • RIM has also backed the technology, and its forthcoming high-end devices, including the BlackBerry Bold Touch, are expected to ship with NFC.
  • HTC, meanwhile, has taken a more cautious approach, stating that it will incorporate the technology once there is established demand.
  • The iPhone 5 was tipped to feature contactless payment, but the latest reports suggest that Apple will omit NFC from its fifth-generation iPhone.
Dan R.D.

Thoughts on Google Plus: The Magic Isn't Social, It's Semantic [28Jul11] - 0 views

semanticweb.com/snt-social-its-semantic_b21852

1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 29 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Sparks are a very simple taxonomy right now, but do have persistent URIs, which you can find by hovering over a Spark and looking in the left of the status bar at the bottom of your screen.
  • This warrants more dissecting and attention. Will they eventually use all or some of the hierarchy of Google Directory? Will they become hierarchical? Will the algorithm improve as we click on links that interest us? Can we add our own information? Are we creating new entities for Google as we search for and add Sparks to our items of interest – it seems that way. It’s not an ontology yet, but it’s a start. Lots of people creating persistent URIs for entities they’ve dreamed up – I hear that evil cackle again!
  • Google, by nature of its founding, is in a prime position to address the challenges that many enterprise technologists have when thinking about semantic data – how do we handle unstructured data? We have metadata: in schema, in taxonomies, in ontologies even. We have loads of content. With no metadata. How do we get them together? We can’t afford to hire a small army of indexers to apply the metadata to the content. The system metadata is insufficient and poor. We have a pretty good search tool, and have put some effort into data dictionaries, entity extraction and rules-based classification. We have tools that do latent semantic indexing and latent semantic analysis.  Make sense of unstructured information? Sure, Google can do that. Hopefully they will not reduce efforts in these areas too much to focus on other projects. Many of us can execute a search and return nothing useful; crowdsourcing tagging in G+ may re-vitalize  components of the search algorithm.
Dan R.D.

Why an Amazon tablet can rival the iPad - TNW Mobile - 0 views

thenextweb.com/...azon-tablet-can-rival-the-ipad

1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 11 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Without so much as a whisper from the retailer itself, Amazon’s Android tablet is heading our way. Rumoured to launch at the end of the third quarter in time for the holiday season, Amazon is hoping it can steal a little of Apple’s thunder and steal a little of its market share.
  • Amazon’s decision to launch an Appstore was a surprising one, especially because there was no shortage of alternative Android marketplaces at the time. Incorporating its patented recommendation system and its “Free App A Day”, the third-party application store won many fans in the US primarly because it has been providing customers with downloads of some of the most popular Android apps and games.
  • Amazon is one of, if not the world’s number one Cloud storage and service provider and is seen by many to have led the march towards the Cloud, with affordable and reliable online services that even the most bootstrapped startups could afford. Asserting itself in the hosting market has helped the company make the best of its other web-based services, namely online music downloads and its new Android Appstore.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Amazon’s DRM-free downloads are not only be cheaper but they will work on a range of different devices – including an iPod – so if a tablet buyer has music on the mind, an Amazon tablet would be a good place to start, after-all it’s a brand trusted by millions all over the world.
  • Amazon, despite not having a device to backup to its Cloud, pipped Apple to the punch with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Player. The service isn’t necessarily revolutionary (it requires a user to upload their entire music collection to an online digital locker or synchronise new Amazon MP3 purchases), but it provides a dedicated storage platform for a user’s music, regardless of where they bought it. In fact, users can upload any file they wish to the service.
  • Apple’s closest competitor in the mobile industry is Google, a company that develops and maintains the fastest growing mobile operating system on the planet. But even Google was forced to admit that its Honeycomb operating system was not up to standard, having previously condemned vendors for creating tablet devices that ran Android builds that were specifically tailored for smartphones.
  • Because Google has restricted the use of alternative apps on its operating system, Amazon requires the user to download the app to their smartphone or their tablet before they can browse or download apps. This poses a risk for the company in the general market but if it intends on releasing its own tablet, it can bundle the necessary software (including its MP3 store and Cloud Player service) before the device is even powered-on by its owner.
  • In July the previous year, Amazon announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year. According to Jeff Bezos, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon was selling, it was selling 143 Kindle eBooks. In just the U.S. Kindle Store alone, there were more than 810,000 books.
  • Kindle fans worried that Amazon would kill its e-ink reader, don’t worry. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has already said “we will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device.” Throughout the article I have referred to the Amazon tablet as a singular. However, there it is highly likely that Amazon will release a family of tablets; one a 10-inch model and a smaller, more portable 7-inch tablet. Chinese sources have indicated that both devices will sport LCD touchscreens, but in the very near future will move to technologies that will be able to switch between e-ink and a colour LCD screen.
  • Analysts have already issued reports suggesting Amazon will sell 2.4 million tablets in 2012. Whilst that figure doesn’t even compete with the 10-12 million iPads that Apple is expected to sell in its third quarter alone, Amazon has time on its side. By subsidising its devices, it can heavily reduce its offerings to get customers investing into its technologies, hitting them with the upsell once they are onboard. Amazon can push its value-added services to boost revenues, whilst slowly building sales of physical devices.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Why Near Field Communications matters so much to the travel industry | Tnooz [26Oct11] - 0 views

www.tnooz.com/...so-much-to-the-travel-industry

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • As of late, Google Wallet and Near Field Communications have taken a lot of flak from cynics, naysayers and glass-half-empty types.
  • NFC will soon be integrated into nearly facet of personal finance and revolutionize the landscape of travel consumerism as we know it.
  • NFC has quickly become a widely covered topic on tech blogs, finance sites and news sources across the web, so we won’t spend too much time on the basics.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Though its potential capabilities border infinity, right now everyone is obsessed with NFC as a form of contact-less payment.
  • Currently, the primary goal of NFC seems to be ridding the world of plastic credit cards, stacks of loyalty cards and paper coupons.
  • The release of Google Wallet heralds a new age of consumer spending.
  • A simple wave of the phone pays for your purchase.
  • Google Wallet’s SingleTap feature allows for the seamless transfer of coupons, loyalty cards and payment information in one simple tap.
  • The New Jersey transit system just partnered with Google Wallet to allow commuters to pay fares with phones.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How Amex, Foursquare, and Others Advanced the Digital Wallet in 2011 | ClickZ - 0 views

www.clickz.com/...e-advanced-digital-wallet-2011

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 27 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The so-called digital wallet made important strides in 2011, sometimes eliminating the logistical need for paper vouchers, mobile apps, QR codes, and even cell phones.
  • At times this transition seems to be sneaking up on us. Earlier this month, thousands of merchants nationwide didn't know they had gained foot traffic and sales thanks to American Express and Foursquare. Amex rewarded consumers who synced their credit cards with their Foursquare accounts with $10 back if they spent the same at local businesses after checking in with the geo-social app. That effort followed up a successful post-Black Friday stint dubbed "Small Business Saturday," when Amex users checking in on Foursquare could get a $25 credit if they spent $25 with a local merchant.
  • Jake Furst, a business development director at New York-based Foursquare, said there was little to no organizational outreach to local businesses. "The merchants didn't necessarily know what was happening as we drove customers to their locations," he explained. "Small Business Saturday was a huge success. We got a ton of interest from Foursquare users and Amex card holders that didn't know about Foursquare yet."
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • While the aforementioned offers have expired, merchants can set up new Foursquare check-in deals via Amex's "Go Social" self-service center for SMBs.
  • Here's how the Amex-Foursquare marriage works for consumers: Sync Amex card with Foursquare account online. Check in at a location. Tap a "redeem offer" button. Pay with Amex card. Get a Foursquare push notification about the money-back reward (see image) within moments after the card is swiped by the merchant.
  • Swipely has begun working with 150 merchants in Boston, its launch market. The start-up offers consumers the chance to sync a credit card to its loyalty program. From there, whenever they spend money at a participating merchant, they can receive a reward or discount. Swipely supplies local businesses with point-of-sale signage and materials to promote the program.
  • Angus Davis, Swipely CEO, said his product should attract consumers and businesses alike because of its usability. There's no need for a smartphone app, much less a printed voucher, he said, in order for shoppers to get rewarded for retail store visits.
  • "Consumers don't have to change the way they behave in order to check in," Davis said. "Nor do they have to change the way they pay by scanning a QR code [or] using newfangled technology. Our program employs technology that everyone already has and uses."
  • He added, "For the local merchant, the program doesn't require any changes in the store. They don't have to upgrade hardware, install software, implement any special cards, or re-train their staff."
  • The 33-year-old CEO said his company would expand to New York, San Francisco, and other major cities in the first half of the upcoming year. "I do think that 2012 is a very ripe time for disruption," Davis said, "especially as the payment space interacts with Main Street merchants."
  • Other noteworthy developments as digital wallets came into focus during 2011: March/April:Groupon and LivingSocial launch "GrouponNow" and "Instant Deals", respectively, which allow consumers to buy time-sensitive offers with one click on their smart phones. To use the mobile commerce feature, users need to input their credit cards into their daily deals accounts. May 9: Scvngr struck a partnership with American Express to make redeeming LevelUp deals easier for consumers. Amex members who buy the deals need only use their cards while making a purchase to get the discount. As is the case with Swipely, it's not necessary to show the store clerk a paper voucher, barcode, or message on a mobile screen. May 26: Google introduced Google Wallet, which lets consumers pay for Google Offers and other items through their Google account. The Wallet mobile app works with credit card users for Citi, MasterCard, and First Data. Aug. 1: Verizon partnered with Amex to serve as the mobile carrier's digital wallet platform. The telecom was one of the first in its competitive space to create its own digital wallet.
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.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • “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.”
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

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • 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

Stocks Cashing In on Mobile Payments (AXP, EBAY, GOOG) [27Aug11] - 0 views

www.fool.com/...ing-in-on-mobile-payments.aspx

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The race to replace your wallet with mobile payment options is on.
  • Consumer demand for smartphones, combined with near-field communication, or NFC, technology that enables everyday purchases, is fueling the shift from credit card swipes to mobile payments. With smartphone sales expected to increase 50% this year, mobile payment services are in a mad dash to capture market share, and the growing competitive space has sparked strategic partnerships among big names.
  • Meet the contendersMobile payment sales in the U.S. are expected to increase at a 68% compounded annualized growth rate over the next five years. It's no wonder that big players like American Express (NYSE: AXP  ) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG  ) want in on the action.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • American Express recently took the spotlight when the company signed a deal with Verizon Wireless allowing mobile users to make purchases on Verizon devices using a streamlined process. As the largest U.S. wireless carrier, Verizon reaches a broad audience. The partnership comes at the right time as American Express opens its own digital payment software called Serve, which will come pre-installed on all Verizon smartphones and tablets.
  • In an apparent bid to boost sales of Android phones, Google launched Google Wallet, a mobile payment platform for Android users. How it works: Google's Android platform will support NFC technology (more on that in a minute) capable of turning your phone into your wallet, letting you store digital credit cards on your Google Wallet account. Just walk into a store, pick up a product, and tap your phone on the payment reader. Google's service will support the payment networks of Citigroup's (NYSE: C  ) Citi, MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) , and First Data.
  • eBay's (Nasdaq: EBAY  ) PayPal has dominated the online payment space for over a decade, but as the competition gets tough and the focus shifts to mobile devices, the company will need to make big moves to maintain its head start. One such move was initiating Titanium+Commerce, a mobile payment program that lets small businesses design their own smartphone apps for processing PayPal transactions.
  • Another emerging competitor in the mobile payments space is ISIS, a mobile commerce network founded as a coalition among AT&T (NYSE: T  ) , Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile. Similar to Google Wallet, ISIS will run on any NFC-enabled device offered by the three carriers. Payment network partners will include American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa (NYSE: V  ) .
  • Why this will workFor one thing, smartphones have conquered dozens of industries by gradually replacing everyday items like pocket calendars, road maps, and cameras with their ever-evolving apps. I have no doubt the move to mobile payments will quickly make credit cards a thing of the past. Who will finish the race with the most market share? The company that can get the most merchants to adopt its service. At this point, ISIS shows the most promise because merchants will benefit from a solution offering multiple wireless carriers.
D'coda Dcoda

Senator Has 'Serious Doubts' About Privacy of Google, Apple Location Apps [10May11] - 0 views

www.pcmag.com/...0,2817,2385150,00.asp

6GEO

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 18 May 11 - No Cached
  • At the close of an almost three-hour hearing on cell-phone tracking, Sen. Al Franken said Tuesday that he still has "serious doubts" that consumers' privacy rights are being respected when it comes to location-based services via iOS and Android. "I think that people have a right to know who is getting their information, and a right to decide how that information is shared and used," said Franken. "After having heard today's testimony, I have serious doubts that those rights are being respected in law or in practice."
  • "We need to think seriously about how to address this problem, [especially since] mobile devices are only going to become more and more popular," he continued. "This is an urgent issue we'll be dealing with." Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the new Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, heard testimony from Apple and Google executives today about how their mobile platforms collect and use location-based data, and what type of control users have over that information. Google said that any location-based data it collects via its Android mobile operating system is anonymous in nature and the majority of that information is deleted after one week. "The location information sent to Google servers when users opt in to location services on Android is anonymized and stored in the aggregate and is not tied or traceable to a specific user," said Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Google. "The collected information is stored with a hashed version of an anonymous token, which is deleted after approximately one week."
  • simon e on 18 May 11
     
    Combine this with the TED talk on selective searches and it looks like a cross between 1984 and The Matrix is brewing up.
D'coda Dcoda

PayPal sues Google over mobile payments [27May11] - 0 views

www.stuff.co.nz/...es-Google-over-mobile-payments

3BT_NFC

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 27 May 11 - No Cached
  • EBay and its online payment unit, PayPal, on Thursday sued Google and two executives for stealing trade secrets related to mobile payment systems. The two executives, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, were formerly with PayPal and led the launch on Thursday of Google's own mobile payment system in partnership with MasterCard, Citigroup and phone company Sprint. The suit highlights the growing battle by a wide range of companies from traditional finance to Silicon Valley trying to take a major stake in what has been described as a US$1 trillion ($1.2 trillion) opportunity in mobile payments. The mobile phone is seen as the digital personal wallet of the future. The eBay suit said Bedier worked for nine years at PayPal, most recently serving as vice president of platform, mobile and new ventures. He joined Google on January 24 this year.
Dan R.D.

Video-Sharing iPhone App Limits Users to 1-Minute Clips [22Sep11] - 0 views

mashable.com/klip

video sharing 1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 23 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • If mobile video sharing is to follow in the footsteps of its more desirable mobile photo-sharing cousin, which application will users want to use to shoot, share and discover video clips? It’s too soon to tell, but startup Klip joins the fray and is now vying for your video attention. The startup released its application for iPhone on Monday with a focus on letting users share super-short 1-minute video clips — on Klip or with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube — and helping users discover clips from friends or other users based on topics of interests. “Klip re-invents the way consumers experience the world by organizing mobile videos in real time and by connecting consumers with the people and the topics that interest them,” the company says.