Category Archives: mobile payments
Worldpay opens up its service to IOS users
Rating: Targeted at SMBs in particular
WorldPay has decided to extend its pilot ‘Pay As You Go Card Acceptance Service‘ for what it calls ‘micro’ merchants. This is ahead of a full commercial launch of the service planned for 2013. Naturally, WorldPay is hoping to recruit hundreds of SMBs to the trial. Good news for Apple fanboys, the service is now also compatible with iOS in addition to the BlackBerry and Android clients it already has. Continue reading
Microsoft fights back with Windows Phone 8
Rating: Kid’s Corner could be the dark horse here
Microsoft finally introduced the much-heralded Windows Phone 8 (WP8) yesterday [October 29th 2012] – waiting three days after the official launch of Windows 8 itself. We’re not quite sure why. After all, the new versions of Windows all boast a similar look and feel, the same technology core, plus the same built-in SkyDrive cloud service. Microsoft says Windows Phone 8 is built to work seamlessly with Windows 8 PCs, Microsoft Surface devices and the Xbox 360 console. It didn’t say which version of the Surface, though. At the Press conference in San Francisco (a place usually more associated with Apple), Microsoft showcased WP8 handsets from Nokia, Samsung and HTC. In terms of what WP8 offers, we’d say the latest version of this mobile OS seems to have three main new features: – Live Apps; Rooms; and Kid’s Corner. It also pumped up the Windows Phone Store. Continue reading
Bango welcomes O2′s merchant rates with open arms
Rating: Might well spark rise in online music sales
O2 (Telefonica) has just announced that it is increasing pay-out rates to merchants, in order to help drive adoption of operator billing. See the full announcement is here. However, Bango‘s CEO, Ray Anderson, speaking at the recent CTIA MobileCON event in San Diego, said, “At Bango we think this could be a hugely influential move.” Bango is predicting that those in the online music track sales business will benefit in particular.” Continue reading
O2 increases pay-outs to drive merchant adoption of Charge to Mobile billing
Press release
October 9th 2012. O2 has announced that it’s increased its pay-out rates to help drive the adoption of mobile billing. With online transactions charged to the mobile set to increase exponentially in the next few years, it has also announced that it is launching a range of significant upgrades to our mobile billing [...]
UK seminar to examine benefits of mobile operator payments
Rating: 50 Shades of revenue, apparently
The Association for Interactive Media & Entertainment (AIME) is holding one of its knowledge & networking seminars – this one is entitled, ‘Mobile operator payments’. It is rather cheekily billed as ’50 Shades of Revenue… from mobile payments’ [if you get the reference to the book] or ‘How mobile operator-billed payments can drive new sales and increase revenues … in ways you can only fantasise about! The seminar is run in association with in association with sponsors Velti, ImpulsePay and SNR Denton. The organisers say that mobile is opening a bridge between the physical and digital worlds since mobile devices are in everyone’s pockets. The seminar will look at whether it be proven that charging Internet-discovered, electronic goods, games, apps and other entertainment services to the mobile phone bill, is a good idea for digital merchants? And, more importantly, is it an idea that will increase mobile revenues? The seminar takes place later in this month [October 23rd 2012] at the offices of SNR Denton in London. More details here . Continue reading
BYOD & in-app payments part of BlackBerry OS 2.1 update
Rating: Improvements should please enterprises
RIM has released [October 3rd 2012] an OS update which applies to the Wi-Fi-only BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 offers consumers, enterprises and developers enhanced security features and a range of new capabilities. It seems that RIM has become BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) aware because PlayBook OS 2.1 – through BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – offers new features that should simplify the deployment of the tablets in the enterprise. Continue reading
Gallagher’s Pretty Green goes m-commerce with Simply Tap
Rating: Fashion retailer’s customers use Mobile Money’s tech to make purchases
Retailers can no longer afford to ignore the power of the mobile sector for online purchases. For example, Liam Gallagher’s fashion retailer, Pretty Green, has seen its mobile traffic rocket by almost 300 per cent in just six months. Consequently, mobile now accounts for some 45 per cent of the fashion retailer web traffic. Hence Pretty Green has selected Mobile Money Network‘s (MMN) Simply Tap solution to power the checkout on its new mobile store. The development is the culmination of previous successful projects between MMN and Pretty Green. Continue reading
Guest Post: The absence of NFC on the new iPhone is not a blow for the industry
by Miles Quitmann, md with Proxama
It’s telling that the absence of NFC on the new iPhone 5 hasn’t been much of a surprise to those of us who have observed Apple’s progress in this area. And Yes, it would have been great if Apple had included NFC; but is that really going to obstruct the march of NFC? We don’t think so. The vast investment in NFC mobile contactless payments and services is not going to wane. And with the NFC-enabled Android, Windows 8 and RIM handsets dominating the smartphone market are we going to see clear water emerge between them and the iPhone? NFC is going to progress at a pace without Apple. This could be Apple’s loss. Continue reading
UK’s Monitise revs up for fast lane
£24m cash injection to help mobile payments firm accelerate growth
AIM-listed Monitise, which provides mobile payments technology for Visa and most of the UK high street banks, will pass another milestone this Wednesday [29th August 2012] when it raises around £24 million through the placing of up to 81 million new shares. With the pace of mobile payment innovation hotting up and Apple tipped to introduce its own scheme with its new iPhone next month [September 2012], rival contenders need to secure turf now before users of the new technologies get too settled. Continue reading
Barclays offers 1st international mobile phone transfers
Rating: Starts off with UK to Kenya free money transfers
The mobile payments sector is hotting up very fast indeed. But Barclays Bank appears to have a strong grasp of what the market wants. That’s the opposite to industry pundits who predict m-payments will only happen if everyone has an NFC enabled handset. What Barclays has done is launch the first international free mobile payments service offered by a bank. As from today [20th August 2012], Barclays customers in the UK will be able to send money to Kenya using the bank’s Barclays Pingit mobile app. The intention isroll this service out internationally, across thirteen African countries by Q1 2013 with expansion into Europe during Q1-Q2 2013. This is no half-baked offering – customers in Kenya will be able to receive up to £5,000 per day. Continue reading
Jumio claims Netswipe SDK ups mobile developer revenues by 20%
Rating: $5 million in free scans for qualifying developers
An enhanced version of the Netswipe mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) – now with Boost 20/20, has just been released by online payment specialist, Jumio. Adding this payment functionality to an app’s checkout process can drive a revenue boost of at least 20 per cent, the company claims. All while taking only about 20 minutes to implement. The good news is that Jumio has allocated $5 million in free scans for qualifying developer plus integration of the SDK is free. The app enables merchants to scan a credit card in five seconds rather than attempting key entry on their mobile devices which normally takes an average of 50 seconds. This significantly reduces customer drop-off at this critical point in the purchase process, Jumio says. Continue reading
Americans now spend more time consuming media on mobile devices
Rating: InMobi confirms that women are keener mobile users when shopping
A US mobile media consumption report for Q2 2012 conducted by InMobi along with OnDevice Research provides some valuable insights into consumers’ behaviour. Some of it we could guess easily. For example, females access their mobile more than men while shopping (40 per cent vs 26 per cent). Der! But this one is the key point for the mobile advertising sector – Americans now spend more times consuming media on mobile devices that they do on TV. Out of the nine hours they spend in total consuming media, mobile is top with 2.4 hours, followed by TV (2.35 hours), and PCs (1.6 hours). More importantly, mobile advertising was found to be effective. The majority of US mobile users admit they’ve been introduced to something new via their mobile device (53 per cent) whilst 21 per cent ending up buying goods on their mobile device. Continue reading
Mobile payments to reach $1.3tn annually by 2017 as NFC and physical goods sales accelerate
Press release
August 15th 2012. The scale of global mobile payment transactions is expected to rise nearly fourfold over the next five years to more than $1.3 trillion, a new report from Juniper Research has found. The report – ‘Mobile Payments Strategies: NFC, Remote Purchases & Money Transfer 2012-2017′ – found that growth would primarily be driven by sales of physical goods by both remote purchases and NFC transactions. These transactions – which will account for 54 per cent of the total value of mobile payments by 2017 – have already been bolstered by stimuli such as the widespread rollout of NFC support infrastructure and the increased engagement of operators with the m-commerce space. Continue reading
Friday interview: Q&A with David Webber, Intelligent Environments
Rating: Financial sector heavyweight joins the mobile industry
Last month [July 2012], Intelligent Environments (IE), which is a leading provider of digital banking software to the mobile industry, announced the appointment of David Webber as its new managing director (md). David is obviously a financial industry heavyweight – bringing with him nearly 20 years of experience in financial services software and managing global operations. GoMobile News managed to steal probably the first ever interview with David in his new role and asked him for his perspective on marrying his expertise in the financial sector with the mobile industry. Continue reading
