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Dan R.D.

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

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

3BT_NFC

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

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

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

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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

PayPal Will Be Expanding Mobile Payments Test To 51 Bay Area Home Depot Stores | TechCr... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...-51-bay-area-home-depot-stores

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 19 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • Basically, via the pilot customers (for now, this only applies to PayPal employees) are able to pay for items via their PayPal account at Home Depot’s point of sale systems. They can either use a pin code via their mobile phone or a specialized PayPal credit card that can be swiped, the payment amount will be deducted from their PayPal account.
  • The bigger vision of brick and mortar partnerships are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will also have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal will also help retailers use location and transaction data to improve the experience for consumers.
  • As PayPal’s Anuj Nayar told us recently,  the Home Depot test program was individually established between PayPal and the big-box retailer, but in the future, PayPal is partnering with point-of-sale software companies to help expand the in-store program to other brick and mortar retailers.
  • The assumption is that the results of the smaller test at Home Depot, which only launched a few weeks ago, must have been positive, so Home Depot is expanding the pilot program. We’re told that PayPal will be partnering with at least 20 other known top-tier retailers for the in-store payments test, which will be unveiled later this year.
  • When asked about the impact of PayPal point of sale integrations will have this year, Donahoe says the last year was about the planning process, this year will be getting the in-store integrations rolled out and next year will be about sale. “The goal is to get a product that will be expanded to every vertical around the world so we can build a business around the point of sale product.”
  • Donahoe said he tried actually the in-store integration this morning at a Home Depot in San Jose (he says he left his wallet and mobile phone in the car), and just was able to enter his mobile number and pin and was able to pay. The receipt was emailed to him.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal Tests In-Store NFC Payments App With Swedish Retailers, Similar Mobile 'Experime... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...e-experiments-to-roll-out-soon

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 20 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • We’ve been hearing that PayPal is going to be rolling out an in-store payments experience at a national retailer in the U.S. soon. It looks like the payments giant is testing another in-store payments experience in Sweden, using NFC technology, and partnering with two Swedish developers Accumulate and Point. You can find more information about the partnership here (in Swedish).
  • As PayPal’s Anuj Nayar tells me, PayPal is experimenting with in-store ‘proximity’-based NFC payments in the test with two Swedish retailers, an electronic store and a sports equipment store. Users can download a PayPal in-store iOS or Android app (only available in Sweden). This app will give them access to special discounts at the retailers. When users visit the store, they will receive an NFC sticker, which will allow them to pay via NFC (with the payments deducted from their PayPal accounts) at the retailer point of sale systems.
  • PayPal worked with mobile payments developer Accumulate on the technology as well as with startup Point, which was acquired by VeriFone earlier this year for over $1 billion, on the point of sale integrations. It’s actually a short-test as well and will only last for five days.
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  • Nayar says the developers involved actually reached out to PayPal to see if the integration would make sense. He adds that over the next few months PayPal will be ‘many’ different proximity-based payments technologies (including NFC) and exploring numerous partnership opportunities.
  • “PayPal isn’t betting the farm on NFC,” he explains. But he says that the payments giant is interested in using the technology as one option for in-store payments. As we’ve reported in the past, PayPal is dabbling in NFC but still believes mass adoption is years away.
D'coda Dcoda

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

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

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

Cash, credit or cellphone? Plan offers new way to pay - 0 views

www.canada.com/...story.html

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Leave your wallets at home, people. You'll soon be able to pay by cellphone.
  • Canada's three big wireless service providers are hatching a system that promises to change the way people shop.
  • Bell Canada, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility said yesterday they have set up a mobile commerce company in Toronto to work on a network that would let consumers use their cellphones to pay for everything from vending machine munchies to transit trips.
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  • The jointly owned company, Wireless Payment Services, aims to standardize and commercialize an easy-to-use mobile phone payment system. The carriers declined to say how much they're spending on the initiative.
  • The announcement is the latest example of Canada's wireless providers joining forces to push potentially revolutionary technology.
  • It's also further evidence that cellphones are moving way beyond their traditional use and into music playing, gaming, Internet and other applications.
  • Consumers should expect to see some changes starting next summer.
  • Prepaid wireless users will be affected first. The aim is to allow them to use their phones to buy more account minutes instead of having to visit a merchant.
  • After that, the carriers want to gradually roll out the system at retail points of sale and service centres like ticketing outlets.
  • "What the user will be able to do, ultimately, is to tap or wave their mobile device in front of a point-of-sale terminal to pay," said Jeff Chorlton, president of Wireless Payment Services.
  • Payment will be withdrawn from the user's bank account or charged to a credit card.
  • "All of your payment methods could be contained on your cellphone," Chorlton said.
  • Many handset makers have begun trials to add a payment function to their cellphone product lines. Payment works through a short-range wireless technology called near-field communication. NFC lets users exchange information securely by bringing two electronic devices close together.
  • The technology could forever alter consumer lifestyles, predicts the NFC Forum, an industry group promoting the technology founded in 2004 by Nokia Corp., Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corp.
  • The Forum offers this future scenario on its website: "With Near Field Communication enabled devices, you will make your travel reservations on your PC and download your tickets to your mobile phone or PDA, just by bringing it next to the computer. Then you will check in for your trip by touching your hand-held device to the departure gate kiosk - no paper, no printing."
  • The system will allow retailers and other companies to save money, Chorlton said. "For some merchants, it could represent the roll-out of infrastructure at very low cost because the infrastructure largely exists through hand-held devices."
  • Mobile users in such places as Hong Kong and Finland are already using NFC technology to hop on a bus or buy some new threads. Canadians should take to wireless payment because they already frequently use cashless commerce like debit cards, said Dennis Kira, an e-commerce specialist at Concordia University.
  • "In my mind, the public in general is ready for it."
  • Canada has about 16 million mobile phone subscribers.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

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

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Contrary to the many rumours in circulation on-line, the ‘Nozomi' or Xperia HD was actually only the codename for the first in the, now only Sony, Xperia range of mobile phones. The Sony Xperia S is now the official name of the device, which was launched this week at Las Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show.
  • Sony has been eager to show off the high definition display of the newest Xperia on the block, with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The phone has two front-facing cameras; one with 12MP camera that is capable of 720p video recording and a front-facing version, for video calling. The Exmor ‘R' sensor also makes a welcome return, which is essentially an image sensor with enhanced imaging characteristics. Introduced to the original Xperia series, this feature helps you to capture high quality, bright pictures especially under poor light conditions. In order to further heighten the camera's specification, there is a 3D-sweep panorama feature and low aperture value - allowing more light to reach the sensor.
  • The Xperia S is also NFC enabled, and offers up 32GB of internal flash storage space, as opposed to the widely considered 8GB that came close to causing mass uproar. The device itself weighs in at 144grams, which is only fractionally more than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This is actually quite impressive, given the bulk of the design
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  • Sony's Xperia S will initially be available with the 2.3.7 version of Android Gingerbread OS at launch, with users being able to upgrade to Android platform 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) during the second quarter of 2012. For reasons unknown, it will be joining an exclusive group of devices which only use a microSIM card, such as the Nokia Lumia 800 and Motorola Razr. This follows the original trendsetters Apple, and their devices. Also, there is no microSD slot; a feature, or lack there of, that many of the newly released handsets are keen to adopt.
  • As we saw with the marketing strategy of the Xperia Arc and Arc S, the company will probably be positioning the Xperia S just below the top devices, aiming to fill the niche right underneath the flagship products of Apple, HTC and Samsung. The ‘S' certainly packs some heavy hardware without overwhelming technical spec, and we believe the price will validate this theory.
  • The Xperia S will arrive PlayStation certified, with access to the PlayStation store and a fast-growing library of music and videos. Despite this, the real benefit of the phone are its ability to take high-resolution photos and videos, whilst being able to view them on the device itself. The idea is to better integrate smart devices, and for them to communicate intelligently.
  • Perhaps a tenuous example of this is the wrist watch worn by the spokesman for Sony Ericsson at CES, who could remotely control the camera and view messages on a tiny screen. It's therefore no surprise that the Xperia S comes with a built-in TV out function, where you can connect via HDMI and enjoy both pictures and videos on the big screen, and in glorious high definition.
  • This will be the inaugural handset, in the batch of the new Xperia NXT series - which stands for NeXT generation of smartphones. The Sony Xperia S has enjoyed no privacy since pictures were leaked back in early December, but it has now been confirmed that it runs from a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 12MP camera and a 4.3-inch screen that uses Sony's mobile Bravia engine.
  • Variants of the Xperia S are also set for launch in the springtime, when the Xperia ion, Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD will be released. The Acro HD will hit the Japanese market with specific features such as infrared port data exchange, mobile wallet and mobile TV.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

gigaom.com/...fc-android-to-android-payments

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • 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

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

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

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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

Update: Facebook Has A Mobile Card Up Its Sleeve In Addition To Advertising | paidContent - 0 views

moconews.net/...eve-in-addition-to-advertising

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • For as long as Facebook has been running its Facebook Credits program—the virtual currency that users can redeem on games and other content peddled through Facebook’s network—it has been letting users top up those Credits using their mobile phones. It does this in partnership with companies like (reportedly) Boku and (definitely) Zong, the payments company bought by eBay’s PayPal last year. Users can also top up their Credits via PayPal and credit cards.
  • It’s not known how much, exactly, is purchased via the mobile channel today, but it is an example of how mobile is actually already driving significant revenue for Facebook. “Facebook Credits make a lot of money through mobile phones,” enough that Zong was “growing very fast last year” because of Facebook purchases, according to Frederic Court, a partner with Advent Venture Parnters, one of the VCs that backed Zong before the eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) buy.
  • This is because while sometimes the mobile payments were actually more expensive than a PayPal or credit card transaction, they are often a lot quicker to do, especially if you are in the middle of a game. And, as with other mobile-based payment options, they appeal to those who don’t have or want to enter card details.
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  • Commissions on those Credits netted Facebook $557 million in revenues in 2011. (Facebook writes in the S-1 that the “other fees” that it designates on the same line as Payments was “immaterial.”)
  • At this point, Facebook doesn’t take any commission on Credits that are purchased via mobile: that service—which uses the premium SMS channel to send a code to a user to redeem Credits on the main site, and then charges the amount directly to the user’s mobile bill—already has some other parties taking a cut, including the provider (eg Zong or Boku), the mobile carrier and even another processing middleman. Rather, Facebook’s cut comes in the form of a commission on the payments, similar to what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) takes for transactions on its App Store. That fee is 30 percent.
  • Could Facebook eventually take more control of its payments, and potentially cut out some of those middle people? Probably not soon, in Court’s opinion. “Zong brought something to Facebook that it didn’t know how to do, and it became very deeply integrated,” he said. “I don’t see them starting to do what Zong does, which is connecting hundreds of operators.” Then again, he added, “When they have a worth of $100 billion with $10 billion on the balance sheet they can do pretty much anything they want.”
  • What’s interesting is that as Facebook starts to expand some of the other functionality on its mobile platform, that will also open up a lot more opportunities in terms of mobile transactions as well.
  • As Facebook enables and opens APIs to get publishers to build apps for its mobile platforms (via the web and apps), “Facebook will make sure those are monetized,” he said. “I have no doubt Facebook will be making money on mobile games and other content given the engagement and scale on mobile. There is an amazing opening there.” Paying for Credits that will actually get used on the device itself, he said, will be “even more natural.”
  • Facebook in the S-1 said it had 425 million monthly active users accessing the social network via mobile devices, with that number outpacing the growth of overall subscribers.
  • “Credits is a wallet that you can top up in all kinds of ways,” he said. “Facebook has created its own currency and has imposed that on anyone offering digital goods on Facebook.” If anything, that currency might have a life outside the platform, to to buy things outside of Facebook.
  • But even with the opportunity for Credits, Court doesn’t see this eventually overtaking revenues from whatever advertising Facebook plans to put on its mobile services “for a very simple reason,” which is down to how those games are played today. “If you look at Zynga, only between two and three percent of people who play actually pay. The rest play for free. Tt will be the same for Facebook on mobile, with only a fraction spending money,” he predicted. “With advertising, 100 percent of the population is exposed.”
  • Even though Facebook has listed “no mobile ads” as one of its risks on the S-1, it could be playing its cards very close to its chest: the last few days has been a lot of speculation already about how soon Facebook will launch those mobile ads.
  • Razorfish (via Digiday) says that it is already working on a pilot for rich-media ads for the social network.
  • The blog Inside Facebook, meanwhile, has put its money down on sponsored stories to be the “most likely” first stab at mobile advertising on the site, with running a mobile ad network the second-most likely option. (That’s one that we explored a bit yesterday as well.)
  • Update: Razorfish’s VP of mobile, Paul Gelb, has made a correction on how his comments were portrayed in the Digiday story (via Twitter): his agency is not working on any mobile ad buying with Facebook. “In the interview I was referring to rich media featured stories, not paid ads,” he said.
  • A Facebook spokesperson, via email, added the following: “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform.”
  • Much has been made of the mobile risks that Facebook laid out in its S-1 IPO filing earlier this week. Essentially, it’s seeing/pushing massive growth in mobile, but it still hasn’t tried out advertising, its most effective route to revenues, on this platform. That’s not to say it won’t. But meanwhile, there is another area where Facebook is already making money through mobile.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

www.readwriteweb.com/...fluence_of_tech_and_paymen.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • 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

Amex Invests $100 Million In Its Future: Digital Ecosystem, Not The Plastic Card | Fast... - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...ecosystem-not-the-plastic-card

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 09 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • In its press release today American Express revealed explicitly that its new $100 million Digital Commerce Investment Initiative was destined to fund "early stage startups to facilitate the company's digital transformation."
  • Amex's Dan Schulman, Group President Enterprise Growth, spoke to Fast Company to explain the move: As far as saying that the credit card is going to evolve, Schulman noted, "It goes even further than that. Our view of the world is that all of commerce is being redefined as the world moves somewhat rapidly into the advent of smartphones and mobile payments and the digitization of information across the entire commerce lifecycle." This quick change, covered by many a column-inch in the media over recent months, means that the areas where Amex "traditionally added value between merchants and consumers" is going to "fundamentally change" and payments will only be "one part of that."
  • Where traditional credit card transactions were all about giving the merchant a secure and authenticated copy of those all-important 16 raised silver numbers on the face of your card, technological developments like NFC, smartphone payments and even innovations like Square and Google Wallet show that there's scope for a much richer interaction to go on at the moment of payment--something that's never been possible before.
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  • The information that is derived from a payment transaction" can be used in "closed marketing loops, can be used to populate your budgets automatically, it can be used to automatically create loyatly, to be able to pay for things in ways that we traditionally haven't been able to do," Schulman was careful to point out.
  • A lot of people think of future payments as an evolution of payment method, "like tapping your phone at a point of sale. We think of that more as a form-factor change, as opposed to a complete value-proposition change" in the way the entire process of commerce is conducted, he added.
  • Amex may very well "partner with different hardware manufacturers, whether those will be OEMs, handset manufacturers or point of sale terminal manufacturers" but the primary intention is to look at software solutions to form an ecosystem that operates alongside the transaction itself (which could not involve a credit card number but instead a phone number) including loyalty points, offers, discounts, and so on.
  • This covers new ways of paying as well as new customers who'll be able to make digital payments for the first time, "the millennials, the youth market, the underbanked or the un-banked" population segments, as well as other parts of the world "where charge and credit is a very small part of the payments industry."
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

American Express Launches $100M Fund To Invest In Digital Commerce Startups | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...t-in-digital-commerce-startups

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Recently, American Express has been pushing its own internal digital commerce initiatives including the company’s digital wallet, Serve. Serve integrates a variety of payment options into a single account that can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card. AmEx also announced a number of recent partnerships in the payments space include Foursquare, Facebook and even Zynga for personalized deals. But today, the financial company is reaching beyond its own internal payments projects to launch a $100 million fund to invest in startups and companies in the digital commerce space.
  • The digital commerce initiative will make investments in a number of areas involving the digital commerce experience, including loyalty and rewards, mobile and online payment management, fee-based services, security and fraud detection and data analysis.
  • “The payments industry is undergoing a fundamental change as the very nature of commerce is redefined,” he explains. “This fund is designed to encourage innovation in the payments space.”
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  • AmEx has previously invested in a number of technology companies such as Clickable, Rearden Commerce, and Payfone but this is the first formalized fund established by the company.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Add NFC to your smartphone - The Red Ferret Journal [08Nov11] - 0 views

www.redferret.net/?p=29691

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The slow rise of NFC (near field communication) has given rise to the idea that you can pay for purchases by doing little more than getting out your phone and tapping it at checkout. While the technology is growing, a surprising number of phones lack this feature. Thankfully there are companies out there who see this issue, and are working to correct it by offering accessories that will add NFC to your smartphone.
  • The first is called SDpass. This product has launched in China and works with KJava and Android devices with a built-in microSD slot. The microSD connection fits in the available slot, and is attached to a small antenna, which receives the signal. This is currently on sale for around $25, and features 2GB of storage on the SD card.
  • Another option that will soon be on the market is an NFC-enabled iPhone case being developed in Taiwan. It isn’t much larger than an ordinary case, with most of the bulk on the bottom, due to the connector. Since the dock connector is blocked, they have added a USB port, which will allow you to charge and sync the phone. It is currently looking to get approval from local regulators before it can be used on the market. When it receives approval, it should sell for around $51. Unfortunately there is no word on when (or if) either of these will come to the US.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How to pay with your iPhone | News | TechRadar [03Sep11] - 0 views

www.techradar.com/...o-pay-with-your-iphone-1008565

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • New technologies, apps and add-ons let smartphones both receive and make payments, and the next generation of phones in the coming years will go further than ever to letting your mobile replace your wallet.
  • Cash transactions are getting rarer with debit and credit cards being accepted nearly anywhere, but you still run into places that stubbornly remain cash-only, whether it's a lunch wagon, a little independent café, or even an artist selling paintings at a market.
  • Lately, several solutions have popped up for small businesses - or anyone, really - to accept card payments by attaching a card reader to their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, or other smartphone.
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  • Square, one of the most recognisable, is a small, square dongle that plugs into the headphone jack on an iOS or Android device, and lets the merchant swipe a customer's magnetic stripe card, converting their account data to an audio signal.
  • The corresponding app software encrypts it and sends it to Square's servers, which communicate with the card-processing companies to complete a transaction. The customer signs their name with a dash of their finger on the touchscreen, and they're able to have a receipt sent to them over email or SMS text message.
  • The main advantage to using the headphone jack rather than the iPhone's 30-pin dock connector is that the dock connector is only on iOS devices, while every mobile has a headphone jack. This meant Square could roll out its system to Android by simply writing compatible software.
  • But you won't see Square - or its many competitors, including the GoPayment, Intuit Credit Card Reader, Mophie Marketplace, VeriFone's PAYware Mobile, the MagTek iDynamo and others - in use at your local pub, since the UK, as well as all of Europe and most of Asia, has moved to using Chip and PIN.
  • Chip and PIN (also called EMV for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) is more secure, since magnetic stripes are more easily read and cloned by black-market devices, and signatures can be forged. The chips in these cards are much more difficult to clone, and even if a card is lost or stolen, it can't be used without the matching PIN. It's been standard in the UK since 2004, but it isn't widespread in the USA, with both banks and merchants reluctant to invest in the new hardware required.
  • But one iPhone-based card reader does support Chip and PIN transactions: the iZettle, a free EMV chip card reader with accompanying app that connects to an iPhone or iPad's 30-pin dock connector.
  • New company Card.io is even offering mobile developers a new way to accept card payments within their apps without needing a scanner at all. Users take a photo of their card and the account number is read and captured by the software.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

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

techcrunch.com/...rtup-tapit-raises-seed-funding

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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