Dorai Thodla, CEO of the US-based iMorph Inc. (http://bit.ly/F4TThodlaD), speaks frequently on the emerging trends in IT.
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India Predicts - Emerging trends in IT and how to spot them [15May11] - 1 views
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This Internet of things will cause another fundamental shift. The shift will be at several levels – at the chip level (hundreds of cores), at the device level (smart phones more powerful than your current laptops), at the interaction level (smart devices talking to each other), application level (smart applications leveraging all these sensors for different uses), and interaction level (caused by touch, gestures and voice inputs).
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In which areas of emerging IT do you see India playing a major role? India can play many roles both as a consumer of the technology and a producer.
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if we handle our innovation infrastructure right, we will participate in every major trend. We can detect them earlier now and we may be a causing a few of our own. For instance, one of the top 10 companies in cloud computing is from Chennai called OrangeScape. One of the best charting applications is Fusion Charts from Pune, and they moved faster from Flash to HTML5.
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We can use some simple tools to gather information from tweets, blogs, web pages, portals and create information pipes. We can apply NLP, pattern mining and machine learning technologies to surface some of the weak signals.
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Building Mobile Web Apps the Right Way: Tips and Techniques [09May11] - 0 views
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Here’s a quick breakdown of the big differences between desktop and mobile platforms: Mobile device hardware is smaller and generally tends to have lower hardware resources than desktops/laptops. Smaller screens bring about different design considerations and challenges. Touchscreen technology introduces new interaction concepts that differ from traditional input devices (keyboard and mouse). With a mobile device, internet connectivity is not always as reliable as a hard-wired broadband connection, which means internet connectivity is a concern and data transfer could be significantly slower. Although these sound as if they are hurdles to get over, with careful thought and consideration, there’s no reason why they should be. Touchscreen technology is exciting. The smaller screen design will really make you think about how to get the user to interact with your mobile web app in the most satisfying way possible. What we should really be doing is looking at the list of differences above and seeing opportunities to deliver our content in a different way. Building mobile web apps will be a paradigm shift from traditional web development and web design.
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In the next sections, we will discuss development/design considerations, as well as concepts and techniques for building mobile web apps.
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Leveraging CSS3 Mobile web browsers these days are pretty advanced. Android devices use a mobile version of Google Chrome, whilst the iPhone does the same with Apple’s Safari. Some mobile devices come with mobile Opera and others allow you to install a browser of your choice such as mobile Firefox. So we’re talking about some pretty good browsers in terms of CSS3 and HTML5 feature support. CSS3 allows us to render things through code that would previously have required an image. We can use color gradients, draw rounded corners, create drop shadows, apply multiple backgrounds to HTML elements, and more — all of which can help improve performance and decrease development times.
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Dealing with Image Performance We want to try to get rid of as many images as we can. For the images we keep, we want them to be as lightweight as possible. If images are a necessity for particular parts of your mobile web app design, then there are a couple of extra steps we can use to trim off any excess fat from your files.
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Using ImageAlpha If Fireworks sounds like too much of a bother, check out ImageAlpha. Once installed, all you need to do is drag your images into its main window and then tweak the export settings to remove excess data from the images.
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If you look at a typical application interface via your smartphone, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find CSS3 being used.
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By using CSS3, we can reduce data transfer — particularly images and possibly excess HTML markup. We let the browser and the device do the work to render the interface more quickly.
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HTML Canvas If you fancy a little more work, then you can improve speed even further using the canvas element. Although using CSS gradients eradicates the loading of a physical image, that method still causes the device’s rendering engine to construct an image in the browser, which can result in a performance reduction depending on the device and browser.
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Hardware Acceleration When it comes to mobile web apps, Apple’s mobile devices are a major consideration that we need to be aware of because of the current popularity of the iPhone and iPad. Safari 5 (on all platforms) brings hardware acceleration into the mix. If you’re not familiar with the feature, Apple describes it as follows: "Safari supports hardware acceleration on Mac and PC. With hardware acceleration, Safari can tap into graphics processing units to display computing-intensive graphics and animations, so standards like HTML5 and CSS3 can deliver rich, interactive media smoothly in the browser."
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Be Cautious of CSS3 Rendering Performance As brilliant as CSS3 is, certain properties can slow down a web page. WebKit-based browsers, for instance, really seem to struggle with shadows in particular, so just be careful that you don’t apply too many of these to elements of your interface until the issue has been resolved.
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Mobile payment security apps coming to NFC-ready smartphones - Computerworld [26Aug11] - 0 views
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Four major credit card companies are working with the Isis mobile wallet venture to install mobile payment security applications on upcoming NFC-ready smartphones in the U.S.
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Visa expects to license its own software, called PayWave, to the upcoming near-field communication (NFC) smartphones sold by the three wireless carriers in the Isis consortium, a Visa spokeswoman said yesterday.
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All four of the credit networks offer contactless payment software, which today is more widely used on cards containing chips than in smartphones. Isis officials said in July that having all four on board will increase consumer and merchant acceptance of NFC-ready smartphones used to make point-of-sale purchases.
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With the various contactless payment applications, customers would likely launch the application on a smartphone with a single touch, and then enter a PIN before waving it at a contactless terminal to make a payment at a retail outlet.
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Video-Sharing iPhone App Limits Users to 1-Minute Clips [22Sep11] - 0 views
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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.
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Gamification: 75% Psychology, 25% Technology [06Oct11] - 0 views
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Should enterprise applications be as addictive as Angry Birds? A true believer in gamification would say yes, if you want people to actually use them.
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[Social media is a powerful tool to connect with customers, but it can create big problems for your company if it's not done right. Learn more at 10 Social Networking Don'ts.]
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Most of all, gamificiation is about understanding that "if you can make something more fun, and include notions of play, you can get people to do things they otherwise might not want to do."
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Businesses have successfully applied gamification principles to achieving goals like reducing travel expenses (Google) and improving cashier checkout performance (Target). The Google example is interesting because it "actually got people talking about how to save money on travel," whereas the more traditional corporate water cooler conversation would be about how to cheat the system, Zimmerman said.
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"Gamification by Design" largely focuses on the psychology of engagement and ways it can be applied to business applications.
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Gamifying an application doesn't necessarily mean adding fancy graphics and sound effects, but often it does mean keeping score and letting "players" see how they rank on a leader board--the equivalent of the high scores screen on a video game. In a business context, that might mean letting salespeople see how they rank and how close they are to achieving a goal or securing a bonus as a way of getting the competitive juices flowing.
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On the other hand, in a traditional loyalty program you might award one point for every dollar a user spends. In a gamified system, you might want to instead provide variable, unpredictable reinforcement where participants can hit the jackpot. This is the design principle that keeps slot machine players glued to their chairs, even though they ought to know the house always wins.
7MorePayByPhone adds NFC to Mobile Payments for San Francisco's 30,800 parking sp... - 0 views
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PayByPhone, a leading international provider of systems for parking and urban mobility payments, has announced one of the largest deployments of near field communications (NFC) payment solutions in the world. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which selected the PayByPhone mobile payment system for parking, is currently adding NFC-enabled stickers to the city's 30,800 parking spaces to give drivers the option to pay for parking with NFC-enabled mobile phones in addition to mobile apps and mobile web for regular phones. All parking meters continue to accept payment with coins.
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The PayByPhone system, already deployed in the Castro district will be extended citywide as installation of the stickers is completed. The PayByPhone NFC sticker has a passive electronic chip that does not require a battery and stores information such as the parking space number that can be read wirelessly by any NFC-enabled phone.
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Since each meter in San Francisco will have a PayByPhone sticker, users can simply wave or tap their NFC-enabled phones over the NFC sticker on the meter to automatically launch the parking application. The mobile payment system recognizes the user, identifies the individual parking location, and the driver enters the desired parking time to complete the transaction. The system then sends a text message reminder before the parking period expires, and if needed, allows additional time to be purchased by phone from any location (subject to time limit restrictions). A receipt is automatically sent to the user's email account. Payment is processed against a credit or debit card associated with the mobile phone number.
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"This is one of the largest deployments of NFC technology in the United States and shows the practical benefits this technology can deliver in terms of ease of use and convenience. There has been a lot of hype around NFC recently and PayByPhone is pleased to now put the technology in the field for real world applications," said Neil Podmore, VP of Business Development at PayByPhone. "We expect this to help kick start the more widespread adoption and understanding of the practical benefits of NFC in 2012."
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The installation of mobile electronic payment systems is already catching the imagination of cities and towns around the world. With a proven role of providing parking authorities with efficient, easier-to-manage and cost effective solutions also comes real-time data to fine tune parking policies and provide parking guidance systems.
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Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014. The potential for this nascent technology is huge, according to Jupiter.
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PayByPhone, the largest provider of payment systems for parking across North America, has ongoing contracts in more than 60 cities, towns and universities including Miami; Dallas; Vancouver, BC; London, Paris and now San Francisco, the largest installation in the United States. Worldwide, the company handles more than 55,000 transactions per day. The company experienced rapid growth in FY 2011, logging an estimated 8 million transactions over the first six month period.
11MoreForget wallets. What else is NFC good for? - Tech News and Analysis [16Dec11] - 0 views
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Near-field communication (NFC) has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But as we’ve pointed out, NFC is just a technology that can applied in a lot of different ways, apart from the digital wallet framework through which many people understand it.
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Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. This not only indicates how flexible the technology is but also could help propel the overall technology in adoption, as consumers become aware of NFC and learn to use it for a variety of reasons.
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Right now, NFC is still below the radar for most U.S. consumers, and the slow roll out of Google Wallet or the pending launch of Isis next year are, by themselves, only going to accelerate NFC adoption by so much. But having a host of uses for the technology could open people’s eyes and push them past any usability or safety concerns.
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San Francisco announced earlier this week it was partnering with PayByPhone to enable 30,000 parking meters with NFC support.
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Intel and MasterCard have teamed up to enable future Intel-powered laptops to work with PayPass enabled MasterCard credit cards.
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Access card maker HID Global announced a trial with Arizona State University in September in which students were provided NFC-enabled phones, enabling them to gain physical access to buildings.
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The Museum of London and its sister institution, the Museum of London Docklands launched a project in August that allows visitors to tap their NFC-enabled phone at exhibits and gain more information, buy tickets to future exhibits or check in, follow or “like” the museums on social services.
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T-Mobile partnered with Meridian Health and iMPak Health in October on a new SleepTrak sleep monitoring system, a wearable device with an NFC-equipped card.
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Many of these things can be done through QR codes, bumping, Bluetooth or other methods, but NFC provides a very simple and often elegant way to get through the process.
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We’re still very early in the NFC game and the phones are just now trickling out in the U.S. But there’s going to be a much bigger flow of NFC-equipped phones starting next year. It’ll be these broader applications that might convince users that the technology has merit.
10MoreStarbucks apps account for 26M mobile payments and $110M in card reloads | VentureBeat ... - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
10MoreHow Mobile Payments Will Evolve In the Next Several Years - 0 views
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Mobile payment has become a mainstream tech topic in the last couple of years, mirroring the rise of smartphones and application stores. E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. The focus point of the buzz has been the evolution of near-field communications as related to smartphones. The thing is, nobody in the payments industry expects NFC to be a player in mobile payments for years, if ever. In that case, what does the mobile payments ecosystem look like in the short term?
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The current mobile payments market centers around several cores: direct carrier billing, mobile wallets, online and offline sales, mobile credit card readers and application stores. During meetings with various mobile payments experts and executives at CTIA last week, the most uttered phrase was: "This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." Where are mobile payments going?
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The Non-Promise of NFC OK, let us get one thing straight: NFC may never be a widely used form of payments. There are so many reasons why it will not be. Foremost, the logistics of NFC are a nightmare. The actual technology is probably ready. The infrastructure around the technology is not. There are too many competing interests coming from above the retail market that creating a universal NFC reader between smartphones and financial services is not going to happen anytime soon. The closest thing to a widely used system would be Mastercard's PayPass, but even as widespread as that is, it is no where near the type of market penetration that would create an inflection point for NFC to take off. Second, PayPass needs a software upgrade to offer any type of deals, something that will be important in the mobile payments world.
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The second half of the NFC conundrum is that there are a lot of hands reaching for the supposed pile of money that NFC payments will enable. Look at Google's announcement of the Wallet product. Or the ISIS partnership between Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Google is partnering with Mastercard, CitiBank, Sprint, FirstData, Verifone, VivoTech (the NFC partner), Hypercom, Ingenico and NXP (another NFC partner). All of these large companies are going to want a slice of the pie. Where does that leave the retailers? You know, the ones that are actually trying to make money with good and services? Sadly, on the outside of the circle. The carriers are the biggest culprits, wanting to take as much as 50% of transaction revenue because it is "going over their pipes." The financial services companies will be happy taking their normal rates in the 1.75% to 3% range as long as there is a promise that more people will pay electronically (read: sans cash). Between retailers, partners and infrastructure, NFC has years to go before it will be viable for all parties involved.
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What will happen in this time frame? Think about the so-called "4G" technology WiMax. The technology is already becoming antiquated with LTE and all the major carriers are working on the next version after that. Sprint is keeping a hybrid of WiMax and LTE going forward but overall it is a tech that died before it even matured. NFC may be the same. What if there are massive leaps in quantum teleportation in the next several years? Does NFC become the WiMax of the payment world?
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Maturation Of Direct Carrier Billing The "I do not see myself buying a fridge with this" line comes mostly from the direct carrier folks. Direct carrier billing is the perfect area for micro-payments and payments that stem from ease of use. Think of parking. If you could pay for your parking on the street with your phone, would that convenience be worth an extra couple of cents on the dollar to you? The direct to carrier ecosystem has evolved to the point where it actually makes sense for offline and online use. Zong (acquired by eBay for PayPal integration), PaymentOne and Boku are the leaders in this space. PaymentOne has processed $5 billion in mobile payments and lets users pay with their phone numbers, validating transactions via text. Zong allows that capability as well. Payment One's "One Care" features, announced last week at CTIA, makes direct to carrier billing safe and secure. Transparency is important in mobile commerce because consumers do not really trust their phones to handle their money quite yet. The most important aspect of direct to carrier billing now is that the revenue mechanism has been flipped. It used to be that merchants only got some 40% or less of payments while the carriers and partners took the rest. Even with high margin transactions, that is unacceptable. Today, direct to carrier billing provides the merchants with more than 80% of the revenue, sometimes nearly 95%.
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The Dongle World: Smartphones As Credit Card Readers Square, VeriSign and Intuit are pushing hard into the dongle department. Jumio is doing the same thing, just without the dongle. There is not much to be said about the dongle world that we have not already touched on at ReadWriteWeb outside of the notion that it is bringing easy credit card readers to the mobile masses.
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The dongle competitors are not worried about what is happening in the ecosytem because it does not really touch their core business. For instance, PayPal does not see NFC or dongles infringing on its business in any way, shape or form. As Laura Chambers, PayPal's head of mobile, said in a recent interview, "we are not worried about much in the ways of competition. There is a lot of white space in the industry for horizontal movement."
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What Is PayPal Really Doing? In the interview with Chambers, the first question I asked was, "Why does it seem like PayPal has become a "me too" operator in mobile payments?" It is a fair question, even if Chambers balked to acknowledge that PayPal has been in "me too" mode for the last year or so. PayPal has ignored the dongle movement and NFC is not on its radar as a technology it feels it needs to integrate. "What is the difference between a tap versus a swipe?" Chambers asked. "We are working with what works in the current infrastructure ... We have sat down with consumers and merchants to work with them on what they want." PayPal is growing sideways because there is not a ton of room right now to grow vertically. PayPal will get into NFC solutions when the time is appropriate. Its strategy now is to create as much flexibility for consumers as possible through its mobile wallet program. PayPal's stance is data driven - the company can track when and what consumers buy from mobile phones and tablets. Hence, PayPal is focusing on the shopping end of the spectrum, as opposed to a pure payments play. "60% of people buy more and spend more on mobile," Chambers said. "But, we see that people are not really buying different things on mobile ... the No. 1 driver of growth in mobile payments is boredom." That fits in well with what PayPal sees as "couch commerce." They released a study recently saying that mobile shopping is going to boom this holiday season. As such, PayPal is ready to deploy an end-to-end solution for merchants and consumers to reward loyalty and provide deals and offers along with digital receipts. PayPal believes that it has a lot of room to grow in mobile through these types of horizontal movements. We are also seeing this on a non-mobile front with eBay partnering with Facebook and the Open Graph API and the new X.Commerce initiative that consolidates the PayPal, Zong, Magento, RedLaser and Milo technologies. The company is calling it an "open commerce ecosystem."
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Future Of Mobile Payments This article is the first in a series of the trends in mobile payments that ReadWriteWeb will be working on in the next several months. There are a lot of questions and the answers are just beginning to emerge. Who are the winners in the space? Are retail shops in danger of "becoming expensive fronts for online shopping," as Chambers said in the interview? Does NFC really have potential to disrupt offline payments or is it just cool technology? These questions and more are what we will be tackling in the months to come.
15MoreMobile banking trends to watch out for in 2012 - Mobile Commerce Daily - Banking - 0 views
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Mobile banking will continue to grow next year across a multiple fronts. Not only will more banks jump into mobile with optimized sites and application, but financial institutions will also build their existing mobile programs with a variety of new services.
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Much of the interest in mobile banking is being driven by consumers, who tend to interact more with a mobile banking solution than they do Internet banking. On average, customers use a mobile banking app three times per week and only use traditional Internet banking two times per week, according Malauzai Software.
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“We see a demand for mobile via the application and text messaging,” said Jim Simpson, vice president of information technology at City Bank Texas, Lubbock, TX, which has over 30 locations across Texas.
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“We are looking to provide innovative services to our customers,” he said. “We have to be competitive and to be competitive you have to offer these services.
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Banks that feature a rewards program will increasingly look to mobile to drive interactivity for the program and drive customers back into mobile banking apps.
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For example, City Bank Texas will introduce a new service early next year that enables customers to quickly and easily temporarily turn off their debit card via the mobile app if they have lost it and then turn it back on just as easily. Currently, customers have to find and call the bank’s 800 number to accomplish this.
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Mobile check capture Many of the big banks currently give customers the ability to deposit checks into their bank accounts using their mobile phones. However, next year more banks are likely to jump onboard and offer this service to meet consumer demand. Malauzai Software’s research shows that a lot of bank customers are investigating remote capture on their mobile phones even if they have not made a deposit yet. For those customers who are using the service, they typically deposit one to two items per month. “We see mobile check capture becoming really big in 2012 – we expect over half of our clients to adopt it next year,” said Robb Gaynor, chief product officer and co-founder of Malauzai Software Inc., Austin, TX.
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“If we can move certain things to mobile so customers can do them on their own time via mobile, it’s a big advantage. It is a stickiness that gets them to stay with us.”
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For example, City Bank Texas offers a rewards account that enables customers to earn higher interest rates and ATM fee refunds based on how much they use the bank’s various services. However, because there was no way for customers to keep track of how many transactions they made or how close they are to earning a reward, customers were frequently calling the call center for this information.
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To address this, City Bank Texas put a real-time reward monitoring service in its mobile app. Now customers can use the app to find out how many more transactions they need to reach the next level of rewards.
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Person-to-person payments Person-to-person payments have been around for several years but use has been limited because the transactions did not take place in real time. However, with Visa recently changing certain rules to enable two consumers to exchange debit card information in a secure way, person-to-person payments will now be able to show up in someone’s checking account within seconds. Visa is expected to roll out a solution for person-to-person payments in the first quarter of 2012. “With real time settlements, you will see a lot more customers use person-to-person payments,” Mr. Gaynor said. “We see this as the beginning of real mobile banking.”
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Some banks may try to ease customers into mobile payments to get them comfortable with the idea. For example, City Bank Texas will give mobile customers next year a way to manage their prepaid, loyalty and gifts card via the mobile app.
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“This is the first step to moving customers to mobile payments concepts,” City Bank Texas’ Mr. Simpson said. “New companies are sprouting up weekly to do mobile payments but the problem is that the debit card is not broken yet – it is still relatively easy to swipe that card.
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Mobile marketing Mobile offers and deals from retailers and third-party services such as Groupon and others were a big phenomenon in 2011. Next year, banks will be looking to cash in on the opportunity here by providing local offers via their mobile banking apps. Bank customers will be able to opt-in to the service so they can receive offers via the mobile banking app when they walk past a local business making an offer and redeem the offer via the app as well. In the past, banks have been reluctant to allow other business to market to their customers but because of the personal nature of a mobile phone and the ability to serve offers based on a customer’s location, this is starting to change. “We see this as a huge opportunity for banks to start making money through the mobile channel as offers are redeemed,” Malauzai’s Mr. Gaynor said “We feel it can be pulled off in an unobtrusive, value-added way.”
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Customized apps Currently, a lot of banks have one mobile app for all of their customers. However, next year there will be a growing number of customized banking apps that are tailored to the needs of a specific customer group. For example, regional banks could customize apps based on which local market a customer belongs to. Or, an app could be customized to the needs of college students, who often have a different set of services available to them. “The first generation of mobile apps lost some of the customization found in Internet banking but now we are seeing more customized mobile experiences,” Mr. Gaynor said. “This is an example of how mobile banking is getting smarter and banks are trying to deliver a better mobile experience,” he said.
14MoreMasterCard tests NFC payments at movie theaters - Payments - Mobile Commerce Daily - 0 views
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The technology is run through an application call QkR that users can download for iPhone or Android devices. Australian movie chain Hoyts is being used for the test program.
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“MasterCard is constantly looking for ways to improve the consumer payment experience by making life easier, and initiatives such as QkR have been developed for these reasons,” said Matt Barr, head of market development and innovation at MasterCard Australia, Purchase, NY.
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“Hoyts decided to partner with MasterCard for this pilot because they recognize the benefits of innovative payment applications in enhancing the overall cinema experience for moviegoers,” he said.
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Consumers who visit premier Hoyts-operated cinemas in Australia can pay for items while in their seats by scanning a mobile bar code. Each seat in the theater has a mobile bar code placed on the arm rest. To pay for an item, users open the app on their phones and scan the QR code. They can then select food and drink items to buy and have it sent to them at their seats. Moviegoers can also enter a six-digit code located above the mobile bar code to activate the app or tap a NFC-enabled smartphone over the arm rest to pay. Users who pay via the QkR app must link their MasterCard accounts by entering their information into the app.
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The new NFC initiative is part of MasterCard Lab’s work that is focusing on ramping up the company’s work with mobile payments.
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“Australian consumers are renowned for their love of innovation technologies, which is why MasterCard selected this market for the pilot,” Mr. Barr said.
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Payment war With similar mobile wallet initiatives from Google and PayPal, the mobile payment space is expected to heat up in 2012.
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However, MasterCard is playing a unique card in mobile payments by bringing mobile bar codes and apps into play.
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PayPal’s new mobile point-of-sale solution is also slated to gain traction this year with big box retailers Home Depot and Office Depot rolling it out to stores (see story).
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One of the challenges technologies such as Google Wallet have struggled with is that it is only available on Sprint Nexus S 4G mobile phones, which leaves out a majority of the mobile phone industry.
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Since the QkR app is available on iPhone and Android devices, the app hits a majority of the smartphone market.
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MasterCard is running an NFC pilot program at movie theaters in Australia that lets consumers pay for food and drink items via their mobile devices.
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For MasterCard, one of the biggest hurdles will be educating both consumers and companies about the technology, but the initiative is proof that the payment company is placing big bets on mobile payments.
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“MasterCard is consistently striving to deliver the next generation in payments,” Mr. Barr said. “Specifically in this pilot, mobile payments and making life easier by enhancing the in cinema experience,” he said.
SHAZAM Launches Adaptive Payment's Pentagon Mobile Payment Application - MarketWatch - 0 views
1MoreNear-field comms tested at Atlanta arena - 0 views
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ATLANTA — The first large-scale test of next-generation mobile phone applications in North America using near-field communication (NFC) was unveiled at Philips Arena here Wed. (Dec. 14). The trial for mobile phone applications includes "contactless payments," mobile content and premium arena services.
11MoreTransaction Systems Architects reports third quarter results - 0 views
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Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSAI), a leading global provider of enterprise e-payments and e-commerce software, announced today that revenue for the third quarter ended June 30, 2004 was $72.5 million, a decrease of two percent over the same quarter last year.
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Net income was $18.7 million, or $.49 per diluted share, which includes a net one-time tax benefit of $10.6 million, or $.28 per diluted share. This net one-time tax benefit is attributed primarily to certain tax restructurings and associated tax elections related to the Company's MessagingDirect Ltd. subsidiaries. Net income of $18.7 million, or $.49 per diluted share, compares to a net loss of $1.9 million, or a net loss of $.05 per diluted share, which included a goodwill impairment charge of $9.3 million, for the third quarter of fiscal 2003.
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For the third quarter of fiscal 2004, revenues were comprised of software license fees of $37.5 million, maintenance fees of $23.1 million and services fees of $11.9 million. The Company's recurring revenue was $45.5 million, or 63 percent of revenue, and non-recurring revenue was $27.0 million, or 37 percent of revenue. Recurring revenue consisted of monthly license fees of $20.2 million, maintenance fees of $23.1 million and facilities management fees of $2.2 million.
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Operating income was $13.0 million, with an operating margin of 17.9 percent, compared to operating income of $4.7 million, with an operating margin of 6.3 percent, in the third quarter of fiscal 2003. Operating cash flow was $23.1 million with a cash balance of $158.9 million, compared to operating cash flow of $12.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 91 percent.
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For the nine months ended June 30, 2004, revenue totaled $223.1 million, compared to $205.5 million for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003, an increase of 9 percent. Operating income for the nine months ended June 30, 2004 was $42.5 million compared to $23.4 million, which included a goodwill impairment charge of $9.3 million, for the same period last year, an increase of 82 percent. Operating margin was 19.1 percent for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to an operating margin of 11.4 percent for the same period last year. Operating cash flow was $44.7 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to $26.1 million for the same period last year, an increase of 71 percent. Net income was $36.7 million, or $.97 per diluted share, compared to $5.2 million, or $.15 per diluted share, an increase of 604 percent for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003.
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During the quarter, the Company added 13 new customers while maintaining a worldwide presence of 76 countries. ACI Worldwide, the Company's largest business unit, added seven new customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to these customers included BASE24®, BASE24-es™, WINPAY24™, and ACI Proactive Risk Manager™. ACI Worldwide also licensed capacity upgrades to 13 customers and licensed seven new applications to existing customers during the quarter.
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Insession Technologies, the Company's e-infrastructure business unit, added six new customers and licensed 12 new applications to existing customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to new and existing customers include GoldenGate™, WorkPoint®, VersaTEST™, WebGate, SafeTGate, ICE™, Automated Operator™ and AutoDBA™.
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IntraNet, the Company's international payments and message processing solutions provider, added one new Money Transfer System™ customer. IntraNet also licensed one capacity upgrade and entered into 17 services contracts with existing customers during the quarter.
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The Company completed the third quarter of fiscal 2004 with $232.8 million in backlog. Included in backlog are all software license fees, maintenance fees and services specified in executed contracts to the extent that the Company believes that recognition of the related revenue will occur within the next twelve months. Recurring backlog includes all monthly license fees, maintenance fees and facilities management fees and amounted to $173.6 million. Non-recurring backlog includes other software license fees and services and amounted to $59.2 million.
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"We are pleased with the quarter's and year-to-date financial results," said Gregory D. Derkacht, President and CEO. "We continue to make progress on our tax-planning initiatives and other projects, and we look forward to building on our worldwide leadership position in the financial services sector with our proven software solutions."
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The Company has revised its revenue estimate for fiscal 2004 from a range of $282 to $292 million to a range of $291 to $296 million. The Company has also revised its EPS estimate from $.74 to $.83 to $1.10 to $1.17, which includes the $.28 net one-time tax benefit.
24MoreHow Visa Plans To Dominate Mobile Payments, Create The Digital Wallet And More | TechCr... - 0 views
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It’s no secret that credit card companies are shelling out big bucks and aggressively forming partnerships and deals to start cashing in on the mobile and digital payments innovations currently taking place. American Express, which recently debuted its own digital payments product Serve, has been particularly aggressive on the partnerships front, striking recent deals with both Foursquare and Facebook. Mastercard has bet on NFC with a partnership with Google for Google Wallet and bought online payments gateway DataCash for $520 million last fall. And Visa has made a number of major moves in the mobile and digital payments space of late; including making an investment (and taking on an advisory role) in disruptive startup Square, buying virtual goods payments platform PlaySpan for $190 million, and acquiring mobile payments company Fundamo for $110 million. We sat down with Visa’s Global Head of Mobile Product Bill Gajda and the company’s Head of Global Product Strategy, Innovation and eCommerce Jennifer Schulz to discuss how the financial company is planning to compete in both mobile and digital payments.
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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.
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Gajda explains that Visa is licensing mobile payments applications PayWave for integration with the ISIS wallet and the company is actively looking for other ways to integrate with NFC into the company’s mobile payments structure.
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Of course, some aren’t so bullish on NFC, notably eBay (who owns PayPal) CEO John Donohoe, who in a recent earnings call said merchants refer NFC “not for commerce.” And odd statement considering PayPal just dipped its toes in the NFC pool with support for Android.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Visa competitor American Express is also working hard to innovate both at the large retailer level, as well as among smaller retailers, with GoSocial.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
21MorePayPal tests NFC payments app - 0 views
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PayPal is testing an NFC mobile payments application at two stores in Sweden while it continues to look for ways to expand access to its payments services.
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PayPal has been experimenting with NFC for a while and recently incorporated NFC into the latest version of its Android app to enable peer-to-peer payments with two mobile phone users tapping their phones together to transfer money between them. The NFC payments app test is running in conjunction with two Swedish retailers and the Swedish developer Accumulate over a five day period.
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“There has been some confusion out there,” said Anuj Nayar, director of communications for PayPal, San Jose, CA. “We are not anti NFC.
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Offline payments The test is running for five days, during which time anyone who downloads the app from the Android store or Apple store in Sweden and enters their PayPal credentials can receive an NFC sticker when they arrive at one of the two stores so they can tap to pay for items in the store.
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“Our wallet lives in the cloud and not on devices. There are plenty of ways to access your wallet in the cloud and NFC could be a great way to do that.”
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“We think it is a very interesting technology and we are looking at ways to use it,” he said. “It is one of the technologies that we are looking at – we are not betting the bank on NFC.
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PayPal parent company eBay has not been a big supporter of NFC – or near-field communications – technology. However, as a leader in the alternative payments space, it makes sense that PayPal would want to investigate NFC.
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“While eBay maybe hasn’t been a big proponent, PayPal has been quite vocal about the opportunity,” said Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry, Larkspur, CA. “PayPal is the biggest jewel in the eBay empire, so their vision is, in my opinion, the most interesting driver for eBay corporate.
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“PayPal’s publicly stated goal is to become as important a payment option offline as it is online,” he said. “NFC is a potentially disruptive technology that could offer fertile ground for PayPal’s offline payments endeavors.”
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NFC has been embraced by numerous companies such as Google, Isis – which is a partnership of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile – and others. However, there are significant challenges facing these companies’ efforts to expand NFC as there are still a limited number of mobile phones available that support NFC.
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However, PayPal – as an alternative payment solution – also faces the challenge of getting retailers to accept PayPal payments if it were to try for a broader NFC roll out.
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“PayPal faces the same challenges with NFC as everyone else in the ecosystem: NFC-enabled phone penetration combined with merchant acceptance penetration,” Mr. Sievers said.
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“In fact, they face an additional challenge since nearly every existing NFC-enabled merchant takes Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover, but those same points of sale don’t take PayPal yet,” he said.
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Long-term strategy While the NFC test is limited, it is another example of how PayPal is trying to bring its technology to bricks-and-mortar retailers. PayPal wants to get merchants to use PayPal and is looking for ways to embed PayPal in the shopping experience via applications, deals and a variety of other merchant services.
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“EBay is recognizing that NFC is one of those things that would enable them to grow more in a physical retail environment rather than providing online or electronic transactions,” said John Devlin, London-based group director of AutoID and Smart Cards at ABI Research.
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However, it is likely to be some time before PayPal would be able to deploy an NFC solution on any kind of scale. “This is something that they are thinking about on a medium to long-term basis,” Mr. Devlin said.
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“In the next couple of years, NFC is really going to be used at the local or national market level rather than an international basis,” he said. “Once it becomes more widely available, that is when PayPal would be more actively interested in pushing ahead.
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The sticker model of NFC – where an NFC sticker is placed on a mobile device to make it compatible with an NFC reader – is more of a limited solution.
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“It is not able to plug into the handset and take advantage of all of the different smartphone functionality,” Mr. Devlin said. “It has advantages in that you can upgrade existing handsets quickly and easily but I don’t think anyone is really pushing ahead with stickers for a long-term consumer solution on a mass market level. This indicates that this is a trial rather than a precursor to a wider deployment.”
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Proximity payments PayPal expects to do $3.5 billion in mobile payments this year using its existing payments solutions. The NFC mobile app test is another way that it is experimenting with new payments solutions as proximity payments grow “This is what we’ve always done – experiment and test and be open to partnerships to drive innovation,” Mr. Nayar said. “What we are going to start to see soon is the growth in proximity payments where you need to be in contact with a reader of some sort,” he said. “This can be done with Bluetooth, RFID and NFC is another way to do it.”
12MoreJumio Turns Webcams Into Credit Card Readers - And Why Merchants Will Welcome 'Netswipe... - 0 views
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If it were up to Jumio, we’re all going to be ‘netswiping’ to purchase books, clothes, travel, FarmVille crops and whatnot online in a couple of years. The startup has been extensively testing its digital payments service in private beta mode since last year, when Jajah founder Daniel Mattes started teasing whatever they were building.
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The startup has since assembled an impressive advisory board, including former Google exec Zain Khan, former Amazon exec Mark Britto and Maarten Linthorst, CEO of CSI Communication Systems. And we recently learned that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and other investors pumped $6.5 million into the startup.
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Today, Jumio is finally unveiling Netswipe, a technology solution that enables e-commerce site owners and Internet retailers to process online and mobile payments by having customers ‘swipe’ their credit cards using virtually any webcam. Think of it as Square for the Web, without the need to purchase and install additional hardware. Watch the video below to see how it works, in a nutshell.
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Jumio is introducing three products for online merchants: Netswipe Start, Netswipe Scanning and Netswipe Processing. Additional products, including a mobile solution, will be released later this year.
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The idea of processing digital payments by scanning credit card information isn’t entirely new, we should note. Last month, for example, saw the launch of Card.io, a startup that is developing mobile applications also capable of scanning credit cards using smartphone cameras, and some other applications like AisleBuyer include similar features.
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Mattes posits that online retailers and e-commerce site owners can quickly and easily implement Netswipe on their websites, and that the solution doesn’t rival but instead complements existing payment solutions that have usually already been deployed (PayPal etc.).
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Jumio says credit cards that are used to pay for goods and services via Netswipe are not ‘photographed’ – rather, the scans are made using videostreaming technology, which enables the company to recognize and verify the card details without storing any data on the client side.
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The main benefits for merchants to implement such a solution are: reducing the time between a customer’s decision to purchase something online and effectively making a transaction, minimize the friction (entering credit card information by typing can be tedious and distracting) and reducing fraud.
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Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes says that, during the pilot phase, a survey with a focus group showed a decrease in churn rate from 52% to 21%. This may well have been more of an exception than the rule, but for most businesses even a 5 percent decrease would have a big impact on the bottom line.
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Netswipe will, howevever, allow merchants to securely process payments both on the Web and mobile – and like Card.io, Jumio intends to enable third-party developers to integrate the technology into their own apps and services. It’s also worth noting that Jumio claims its technology is patented.
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If all this is true, the Netswipe technology solution is one hell of a unique selling proposition for everyone involved – little or no downside and a lot of upsides for sellers and an additional, convenient method of payment for buyers.
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The proof of the pudding is of course in the eating, as they say, so I’d be very interested to learn from online merchants and e-commerce business owners what their thoughts on the new service are.
8MoreIntuit Enables Mobile Credit Card Payments on the iPhone | TechCrunch - 0 views
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Today Intuit has announced that GoPayment, a mobile applications tailored to process credit card payments, is available in the App Store for the iPhone or iPod touch.
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The app essentially turns the iPhone or iPod touch into a credit card terminal that can process payments, track past charges, and generate electronic receipts for the customer. Rather than wait for checks to clear or invoices to be paid, transactions can be processed on the spot via mobile connection. Card information can be inputted manually, or synced via a bluetooth enabled card swipe device. Intuit also assures that information is never stored on the handset, and that data is protected during transmission with financial industry standard technology.
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t will definitely be a while before people feel comfortable swiping credit cards through a mobile device, but as large, reputable companies like Intuit enter the space the stigma surrounding mobile payments may slowly wane.
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The service seems to be designed for enterprise use, with a centralized online service center where user accounts and transactions can be monitored and managed. An entire staff’s payments can also be synced with QuickBooks for organizational purposes. Intuit states in the press release that motivation for the product stemmed from the observation that more and more entrepreneurs are relying on iPhone’s to manage businesses.
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Today Intuit has announced that GoPayment, a mobile applications tailored to process credit card payments, is available in the App Store for the iPhone or iPod touch.
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The app essentially turns the iPhone or iPod touch into a credit card terminal that can process payments, track past charges, and generate electronic receipts for the customer. Rather than wait for checks to clear or invoices to be paid, transactions can be processed on the spot via mobile connection. Card information can be inputted manually, or synced via a bluetooth enabled card swipe device. Intuit also assures that information is never stored on the handset, and that data is protected during transmission with financial industry standard technology.
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The service seems to be designed for enterprise use, with a centralized online service center where user accounts and transactions can be monitored and managed. An entire staff’s payments can also be synced with QuickBooks for organizational purposes. Intuit states in the press release that motivation for the product stemmed from the observation that more and more entrepreneurs are relying on iPhone’s to manage businesses.
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It will definitely be a while before people feel comfortable swiping credit cards through a mobile device, but as large, reputable companies like Intuit enter the space the stigma surrounding mobile payments may slowly wane.
28MoreDoes Facebook hold the future of mobile payments in its hands? - Mobile Commerce Daily ... - 0 views
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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.
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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).
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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.
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Today users can buy Credits with 15 currencies, including U.S. dollars, Euros, the British Pound and the Venezuelan Bolivar.
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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.
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To date, Facebook sees over 200 million unique users accessing the social network through a mobile devices each month.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The closet form of mobile payments in the U.S. that can be utilized nationally is the Starbucks digital gift card.
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While this option only applies to Starbucks stores, consumers can now makes purchases by scanning their phones.
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The biggest challenge, currently keeping mobile payments from going mainstream is technology adoption.
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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.
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Other challenges that could cause slow growth are the number of companies attempting to break into the space.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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