Benefits for coupon and deal providers-GROUPON App! Positive Externality!

According to the 'Mobile Payments 2012' report, both the owners of the infrastructure and the third-party developers have developed various types of Apps and these Apps are increasingly being used for mobile payments in daily life. Nowadays some social platforms such as Twitter have developed great payment services, including Twitpay or Twippr. Moreover, most of the banks are benefiting from the mobile payments by developing apps for mobile banking and some also allow mobile payments through the same app, raising the efficiency of transaction processing effectively.

In the previous posts, I have introduced the benefits pie for the mobile phone carriers, credit card companies and E-commerce players regarding the mobile payments. Meanwhile, Groupon App has created tremendous value for coupon and daily deal providers as well! Software-makers already got the ball rolling with apps that scanning loyalty cards and other barcodes just like the Groupon app in exchange for goods. As people grow accustomed to using a phone instead of a card for buying goods and services, deal-makers and advertisers will be able to expand.

GROUPON MODE

Most of us might be familiar with the motto that Groupon claims itself as 'Unbeatable deals daily on the best stuff to do in cities across the world!'. Groupon features deals on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 500 cities and eleven fiefdoms around the world. The discounts typically range from 50% to 90% and that's why Groupon called its deals unbeatable. Every deal is handpicked in order to make sure that customers can confidently embrace salsa lessons, hot air balloon rides, and hand-tossed pizzas. Moreover, daily deals are signed, sealed and delivered to your Android phones each morning, while thousands of deals on demand can be found in real-time, ready for immediate use with Groupon Now!.

Late last year, Groupon has developed an application aimed at smart phones and tablet users application consisting of the two buttons: "I'm Hungry" and "I'm Bored,” which locate the closest and best deals for food or entertainment, respectively, through tracking an individual via GPS. Andreas from Groupon perceived it as 'It’s great for grabbing a quick lunch with a friend on the cheap.' Here are some important things that people can do with Groupon App:

• Browse daily deals, Groupon Now! deals, view and purchase deals from the city they are in.
• Sign in to their existing Groupon account to find and organize the library of previous purchases and also sign up for a new Groupon account directly through the app.
•  Map and sort local Groupons in real-time: activate the GPS feature to plot Groupon purchases closest to their current location in addition to sorting Groupons by expiration and purchase date.

Here is a clip regarding the Groupon App on smart phones. Enjoy! 

Positive Externality EXISTING!

The current business model of Groupon is based on a combination of 'economies of networking' and 'economies of scale'. Typically, economies of networking are the benefits associated with a larger and larger number of consumers buying a certain product, similar as the 'Positive Externality' mentioned in the Digital Marketplace class. The larger the number of people using the product, the more potential valuable is generating and creating by the product to each user within the network since they all apply to software usage.

Apps have truly altered the landscape for mobile payments in a positive way. With the added functionalities and enhanced user experience mobile apps are a serious driver for mobile payments.

Reference:

1. Mobile Payments 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.innopay.com/content/mobile-payments-2012

2. Introducing Groupon Now! Retrieved from: http://www.groupon.com/now/about

Mobile Payments APP Making its Move!

Barclays launching Pingit

With the rapid development of the Information Communication Technology nowadays, the mobile phone payment has been inevitably changing people's life style to some extent. In the previous blogs, I mentioned Barclays as an example that it enlists NFC tags to enable mobile payments. Report shows that earlier this year in February, Barclays has launched the Pingit mobile payment app to make its move in the mobile payment space, which was perceived as 'banking giant Barclays has declared war on mobile payment expert PayPal with the launch of Pingit, a smart phone app that allows customers to quickly transfer money via their smart phone'.

The Pingit app is available for Android smart phones, BlackBerry and iPhone. According to the statistics, Pingit allows accounts to be associated with mobile numbers and amounts that between £ 1 and £ 300 can be transferred in as little as 30 seconds using the Faster Payments service. Barclays claims that the Pingit system will make best use of making payments including splitting bills at restaurants and takeaways. For instance, for friends splitting the cost of dinner, repaying a borrowed £10 or people sending money to a son or daughter at university, it's free, quick, convenient, secure, and easy to use. Antony Jenkins, Barclays Chief Executive claimed at the launch of Pingit that' Barclays Pingit could revolutionize the way people send and receive money'. I guess that the most appealing point of Pingit might be the comparatively secure transaction among people since they can send and receive money within seconds and without having to enter the detailed information for accounts.  

Here is one clip regarding the Barclays Pingit App. Enjoy!

Text Message payments were launched by O2 mobile wallet app

News came out earlier today that 'The Barclays Pingit app is now open to all UK bank and building society accounts, for example, and the Orange Quick Tap app will be available on new Android handsets in the coming weeks, but it is O2 taking all the headlines with the launch of its all-encompassing O2 Wallet this week.'

Intended to allow users of phones with Near-Field-Communication (NFC) chips to make contactless payments in high street shops, recently, mobile network O2 has launched a smart phone app that allows users to transfer up to £500 via text message, and meanwhile to digitalize their debit and credit cards, which would largely speed up both the purchases in-stores and those from the online stores.

According to O2's statement, the service will be free to customers at first, but it would probably charge 15p for each money message sent by text at a later date. To my understanding, if the services provided at the free trial go well, people might be willing to spend money for these types of premium services, which would make great convenience in daily life. The network provider said that more than 100 retailers had agreed to accept payments from the service. They include Debenhams, Comet, Sainsbury's Direct and Tesco Direct.

People might have security concerns regarding the uptake of such technology accessing personal details, passwords, pin codes and other financial data within the daily transactions. James Le Brocq, managing director at O2 Money noted that all these information are held on remote central servers rather than on different mobile device and 'O2 wallet has been trialled internally for months and has undergone extensive 'stress-testing' with security experts'. Hopefully, the O2 mobile wallet app would be the safest way to deliver payment services by now.

Here is a clip regarding the O2 mobile wallet app. Enjoy!!

Reference:

1. Barclays Promotes Pingit Mobile Payments App with One Tough Customer. Retrieved from: http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/Barclays-Pingit-Campaign-041612.aspx

2. Taking a mobile and a wallet to the shops? Retrieved from: http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/taking-a-mobile-and-a-wallet-to-the-shops-7687191.html

Google Wallet Invading your traditional wallets!!

In May 2011, Google announced the Google Wallet. Google Wallet is a mobile payment system developed by Google that allows its users to store credit cards, loyalty cards, and gift cards among other things, as well as redeeming sales promotions on their mobile phone. Google Wallet uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to make secure payments fast and convenient by simply tapping the phone on any PayPass-enabled terminal at checkout. Google has been testing it extensively since initial announcement.

In September 2011, Google released the first version of the app to Sprint. It was beginning to roll out Google Wallet to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones through an over-the-air update. This app is the latest to use Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to facilitate payments that customers pay for items in brick-and-mortar shops by tapping their phone to a vendor’s PayPass reader, a small box for transmitting data that can be found in major retailers like Macy’s, Whole Foods, and McDonald’s. In order to get its app off the ground, Google partnered with MasterCard, which has been using NFC chips on some of its credit cards since 2003, and originally developed the PayPass reader.

"Google's Nexus S device that it recently announced is the first Android-powered device supporting NFC and we expect NFC is going to increasingly become a default feature of every smartphone that is sold over the next couple of years," Charles Govlin, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News. Also, Market researcher Gartner said with the total value of mobile transactions reaching $245bn in 2014, demand for mobile wallet services would be huge.

Google Wallet in-store

Google Wallet enables people to pay with their Citi MasterCard credit cards and the Google Prepaid Cards, which can be funded with any of your existing plastic credit cards. Meanwhile, the Google Wallet mobile app securely stores people's credit cards and offers on their phone. When people check out at brick-and-mortar stores that accept Google Wallet, they can pay and redeem offers quickly just by tapping their phone at the point of sale, quickly, conveniently and securely. The whole process can be divided into two steps. Step 1, people would have to look for PayPass symbols when they check out for purchases. Step 2, they have to tap their phone on the reader, at the same time, their phones would send payment and, at some merchants, offer loyalty information.

Google Wallet online

The Google Wallet online service stores people's credit cards in the cloud. When they checkout at online merchants that accept Google Wallet, they can quickly pay by signing into your Google Wallet account. By now, the Google Wallet is accepted by thousands of online merchants. With Google Wallet people can quickly and easily buy from stores across the web just by signing in to their wallet account instead of creating multiple accounts and passwords to increase complexity and insecurity. Google wallet has made it possible for people to add all of their payment cards to Google Wallet, so that they can say goodbye to traditional leather wallets.

A wallet that is LOCKED

Unlike the leather wallets that we have, Google Wallet is a wallet that people can lock. By setting up a Google Wallet PIN that must be entered before making a purchase. This PIN prevents any unauthorized access or payments. Google Wallet also has a fraud protection policy that covers people against unauthorized purchases made through Google Wallet, and all the payment information is securely encrypted and stored. Not only does Google Wallet encrypt payment information, it puts the data in a place only trusted programs have access, such as a separate chip in Android phones called the Secure Element.

Here are two clips about the Google Wallet. Enjoy!

Introduction for Google Wallet

Google Wallet IN ACTION!!

Reference:

1. Google's NFC-Powered Digital Wallet: Room For Your Shopping Lists, Credit Cards ... And Complete Trust. Retrieved from: http://www.fastcompany.com/1755490/google-shopping-wireless-wallet-nfc-payment-nexus-smartphones

2. Google to show off mobile wallet for Android phones. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-13540466

Other players dividing rest of the BENEFITS PIE. E-commerce taking actions!!!

There is a crowd of players in various categories of mobile payments, who hold short-term or long-term plans for making money and benefits through mobile phones, such as the mobile phone carriers, the credit card companies, and some third-party sluggers including PayPal and Google. Both of PayPal and Google gain profits either selling hardware, or through transaction fees and revenue sharing. 

Mobile Phone Carriers:

Mobile purchasing is extremely convenient for customers, and also mobile phones that have NFC chips inside can help with attracting and keeping customer base for mobile phone carriers. However, that's just one part of the equation. The Isis mobile payment network has already be formed by Verizon, AT&T, and T-mobile banding together, which includes an incentive element with deals and coupons. 

Credit Card Companies:

When mobile payments start catching on, consumers will eventually depend less and less on credit cards but more on the NFC chips in their mobile phones for approving digital deductions from their bank accounts while at a register. Potential business opportunities have been spotted that if Visa and MasterCard could give their mobile phone apps traction, they could probably keep money flowing through their own channels while keeping new contenders from dividing the market shares and revenues. 

E-commerce players taking actions:

The mobile space has inevitably become the hot spot for E-commerce players such as Google, Amazon, PayPal, and other online sellers with their own payment structure to extend their services and business. Amazon is considering its role with NFC. PayPal already has various mobile apps for peer-to-peer money transfers and PayPal will also be extending its mobile presence, CNET learned. PayPal has been one of the brightest spots in Ebay's financials during the last quarter, reporting a 28% increase in revenues in comparison to the previous year according to the statistics. PayPal is already well established in online payments, as online traffic moves to mobile, it sounds reasonable to assume that PayPal can keep growing strongly.

Here are two clips about how PayPal is dealing with mobile payments.

Speaking of Google, one report stated that Google has been working on an Android solution with MasterCard for mobile payments. It is betting strongly on the mobile payments industry with its Google Wallet product. This platform allows users to store digital credit cards information in their Android operated smart phones, and customers can pay for purchases at a store by simply waving their phone on a compatible reader. Some big players in food industry and retail industry like McDonald's and Macy's have already supported the Google Wallet. Citibank and MasterCard are Google's financial partners in this project.

Google is a dominant player in operating systems for smart phones with Android, and has many other services that could be integrated with mobile payments, including online search, mapping and advertising are just a few examples to keep in mind. 

Google looks strategically well positioned in this new industry. In the next blog, we will go into more details about the Google Wallet.

Reference:

1. Pushing Mobile Payments. Retrieved from:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203721704577156950263635424.html

2. EBay bets the house on Ecommerce, PayPal. Retried from: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2012/04/20/ebays-leading-mcommerce-strategy-helps-it-beat-analysts-expectations

Mobile payments replace cash in the future? See the benefits generated for banks!

The report, “Mobile B2X: The Next Mobile Payment Wave in International Markets,” said that mobile payments in the new mobile business-to-exchange sector have great probability to succeed because it will address numerous pain points that have plagued cash for decades such as high processing and handling costs, security concerns and the need to spend considerable time to access it. 


But are mobile payments going to replace cash or credit by the year 2020?

The Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center has recently conducted a survey, which get 1021 Internet and tech experts and users involved. Among them, sixty-five percent of participants responded that they believe by 2020, most people will have embraced and fully adopted the use of smart-device swiping for purchases, nearly eliminating the need for cash or credit cards. However, 33 percent expressed their concerns regarding both privacy and security of the information.

We don't know yet.

However, currently, the benefits including increased security that people don't have to risk inputting their credit card information over and over again, increased convenience that purchases can be done with simple scanning within a blink of an eye and higher sales have been brought by mobile payments. Chances are that, once businesses start to adopt mobile payments, transaction volumes are expected to increase drastically.

With credit cards, banks can definitely extend their line of credit to different individuals for NFC and other mobile payment use. Banks will be able to offer new treasury and cash management services that let commercial clients’ payments or receivables be pushed through the mobile channel.

Increase Market Penetration

Market penetration of the banks are increased by going for the underserved customer segments and then growing the total revenue pie. In other words, mobile business-to-exchange payments represent new revenue streams for banks and an opportunity to break the carrier’s stranglehold on mobile payments in unbanked countries. Also, mobile banking can serve primarily to reduce the cost of deploying customer touch points into lower income or more remotely located population segments.

Reduce cost of service provision

From the cost perspective, the cost of bank service provision has been largely reduced, putting great emphasis on bottom-line over-line growth. Cutting costs is not only about seeking lowest cost position in the market but also deterring competitors from engaging in value-destroying price wars, thereby protecting the revenue base. So replacing more expensive channels and devices with the comparatively cheaper mobile solution is fundamentally efficient and sustainable. One potential challenge would be for mobile carriers and banks to build up their cash-out agent networks, as despite the growth of mobile payments.

I just came up with a good example. News came out yesterday that Barclays enlists NFC tags to enable mobile payments. Barclay’s payments division Barclaycard has introduced PayTag, which is a near-field communications tag that users can stick to the back of their mobile phones. By holding a phone outfitted with PayTag over a contactless payment terminal, users will be able to pay for purchases up to 15 British pounds, or approximately $24 U.S. dollars, via their Barclaycard Visa credit card account. Beginning in June, users will be able to make purchases of up to 20 British pounds, or approximately $32 in U.S. dollars. In all, Barclays bank is giving customers a way to pay for small purchases with their mobile phones at a variety of merchant and transit locations, exploring new ways of business and changing people's life influentially.

There is a video regarding Quick Tap with contactless payments from Barclaycard. Enjoy!!

References:

1. Report "Mobile B2X: The Next Mobile Payment Wave in International Markets", Retrieved from: http://www.celent.com/reports/mobile-b2x-next-mobile-payment-wave-international-markets

2. Are Mobile Payments Going To Be Bigger Than Cash Or Credit By 2020? Retrieved from: http://consumerist.com/2012/04/are-mobile-payments-really-going-to-be-bigger-than-cash-or-credit.html

3. Barclays enlists NFC tags to enable mobile payments. Retrieved from: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2012/04/20/barclays-enlists-nfc-tags-to-enable-mobile-payments-for-customers

Mobile phone made finance simple

Statistics showed that the top five trends of the technology world to define year 2011 would be Second Screen Apps, HTML 5, Group Messaging, Online Network Privacy, and most importantly, Mobile Payments. The market has been very busy in 2011, as Google, Ebay, credit card companies, banks, carriers, and a number of startups jostle for position.

Among all the mobile payment methods, one of the defining features of the next generation of smart phones, which are starting to come out and thriving nowadays, would be a technology called Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC refers to a set of standards for mobile devices that allows them to communicate wirelessly by either touching or bringing them into close proximity (a few centimeters  far) with another NFC-enabled device. Speaking of the NFC technology, people might immediately think of barcodes, Quick Response Codes and other electronic tags as using NFC, but unlike those examples with only one-way of communication, let's say, between the scanner and the tag, NFC allows two-way communications, which provides a more dynamic medium where more information can be transmitted.

Since the capability of NFC technology, such as low speed, and short range of connection area, is coupled with mobile devices that are portable, highly personal and attached to an individual,  the technology has a broad range of applications, which generally fall into three main categories: the access controls to buildings, parking lots, or other vehicle and equipment services; social networking and information sharing, where people share images, articles, application, exchange business cards, personal information, or download data, etc; and finally the payment methods and facilitation, such as paying or the services and goods including mobile banking transfers and payments, groceries, bus or taxi fares, flight tickets, concert tickets, etc.

Compatible with the existing contactless infrastructure, NFC is characterized by a natural and intuitive 'just touch' movement with great simplicity and convenience. When people are shopping in the store, instead of whipping out your wallet, via NFC you'll simply tap or wave your phone to make a payment. This has major implications for banking institutions and the four main payment networks in the US, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. All have been actively preparing for this sea change in how we pay for things. In 2011, Visa has already teamed up with Samsung in order to bring NFC-enabled mobile payments to the London 2012 Olympics. With any NFC-capable phone, mobile users will be able to pay for purchases using only their phone at over 60,000 locations in London. Also, American Express has a digital payments and commerce platform called Serve, which recently announced its first carrier deal since launching in March of 2011. As we can tell, Mobile contactless services will for sure change people's daily lives. With this continuously updating technology, people will be able to make payments more quickly and more accurately.

Manufacturers and industry pundits have been claiming that NFC will hit its stride this year. Several NFC's benefits to the consumers and businesses have been defined as being intuitive, that requires no more than a simple touch; being versatile that NFC is ideally suited to the broadest range of industries and fields; and being open and standards-based, that the underlying layers of NFC technology follow universally implemented ISO, ECMA, and ETSI standards. Besides the obvious existing benefits, people should also be alert with the critical issues and concerns regarding security for transactions as well to prevent themselves from pursuing cutting-edge technologies while ignoring the accompanying risks and challenges since all the flourishing technologies or innovations come with pros and cons.

In the next blog, we will talk about besides NFC's benefits provided to the customers and businesses, who would probably make profits from this booming technology?

Below is a clip that introduces the NFC application for the mobile payment. Enjoy!

Start the navigation in the retail finance world with ICT!

With the splendid development of the Information Communication Technology nowadays, the mobile phone has rapidly become an integral and essential part of our daily lives. Statistics showed that in many countries, more than half the population uses a mobile phone and, in some developing economies, mobiles are often people’s only means of telecommunication and socialization.

It's easy to notice that, influentially, mobile phones have fundamentally changed how we communicate with each other and how we convey important information instantly in society. Today’s mobile phones are more than just phones: they can send multimedia information such as video clips, photos and music to almost any corner of the world, store personal information, keep a schedule and more than that. Mobile phones have become a ‘pocket partner’, which would somehow make us feel sort of lost and disconnected when we are away from our phones. They have become a dominant technology in the developed world. With innovation racing ahead in the western countries, there is also the danger of developing countries once again being left behind, this time technologically, what is called ‘the digital divide’.

However, the impact of mobile phones has possibly been more profound in developing countries that have had poor telecommunications infrastructure. To some extent, mobiles are ‘leapfrogging’ the technological gap between the developed and developing world.

Let me introduce the very initial idea for blogging the impact of mobile phones on finance. One article caught my attention intensively the other day with the topic of somewhere near the bottom of the pyramid, ICT in mobile devices have laid much influence and impact on the way that people communicate, the lifestyle that people live, and more importantly, the way that they earn a living. I got to know that some farmers in remote villages of Kenya are using mobile phones to keep abreast of crop prices; Rural fishermen in Sri Lanka pick out the best fishing spots with satellite mapping of fish colonies. Moreover, migrant workers in countries such as Sierra Leone, Kenya and South Africa no longer need intermediaries to transfer money by means of mobile banking to relatives in remote villages. I was so touched by these stories, to which I extraordinarily realized how drastic impact have the mobile phones made to the whole world of new age, especially to those countries and places, that tremendously needed information and communication technologies for further development.

In addition, considering the growth of mobile technology, including the usage and spread, and taking into account its access to the financial services, mobile financial services are regarded as an opportunity to reach a larger scale of customers and as a new source of profits for mobile network operators.

In the following weeks, this blog would cover several segments for the impact of mobile phones in the retail financial services, including the mobile payment methods used by banks, paypal, ebay, ICT in banking; Google's mobile-payment system, called Google wallet; mobile money transfer and smart phone apps; and application of Quick Response code on mobile phones,etc. Meanwhile, this blog would also deep dive the driving force and influence  of ICT in the territory of financial services, and what insights we could have learned out of it.

Let's start the journey. Enjoy!