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Breaking Mobile Financial News
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Will Retailers Own Mobile Payments in the U.S.? May 2, 2013, 11:12 am
Over 3 million per week: that’s how many mobile payment transactions Starbucks processes in the U.S late march when the company had its annual shareholders meeting. Mobile now accounts for around 10 percent of Starbucks’ total transactions in the country. For those sceptics, this week they reported it has grown to nearly 4 million. For the sceptics though we haven’t seen impressive adoption numbers from the Isis pilots in Salt Lake City and Austin and Google Wallet isn’t getting a lot of traction. So, will it be retailers that make mobile payments take off on a large scale in the U.S.? They already own the relationship with their customers, and many are seeing the opportunities mobile brings to their business outside of payments. Back to Starbucks for a moment: the coffee franchise got in on the game early, in January 2011, when it became the first global retailer to offer its
own mobile payment technology—combined with its loyalty program. Shouldn’t ignore that loyalty aspect: the company also reported last month that new mobile app users say the ease of tracking loyalty points is a major reason they use it.
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Traditional Money Transfer Players Continue to Invest in Mobile May 2, 2013, 11:03 am
Peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile money transfer is a huge business, both domestic and international, and growing. The results from the GSMA
Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey released at Mobile World Congress showed that during the month of June 2012, there were: - 30 million active mobile money customers
globally - 224 million transactions (PayPal did a monthly
average of 196 million during Q3 2012) - $4.6 billion USD transferred
The survey results show that there are more mobile money accounts than bank accounts in Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda. Globally, there are 150 mobile money services for the unbanked, 41 of which were launched in 2012. The industry is also seeing more competition, with 40 markets having at least two different services available. People are moving money to each other using their phones. It’s a key mobile financial service. That’s why it comes as no surprise that traditional bricks-and-mortar players, like MoneyGram and Western Union, are continuing to invest in new products to leverage their existing systems and stay relevant in the mobile world. Qtel, one of our customers and Qatar’s leading mobile operator, ...
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Malaysia’s New Mobile Banking Platform: Poised for Success May 2, 2013, 10:51 am
Bank Negara Malaysia has recently launched a new mobile payment channel called MyMobile through its wholly owned subsidiary Malaysian Economic Clearing Corporation (MyClear). For the kickoff, MyMobile has teamed up with the country’s three largest banks, CIMB, Maybank and Public Bank, as well as the three largest mobile operators, Maxis, Celcom and DiGi, who collectively represent 93 percent of the country’s market. Interestingly, two of the operators, Celcom and Maxis, had already been offering separate mobile money initiatives for years. Each had its own standalone service, and neither had been able to dominate the ecosystem. The lack of success was strange as Malaysia seemed like a great market, with 38 million mobile phones, and aspects of both an emerging and developed economy. The country has a large, educated and employed urban population with good access to banks. According to recent estimates, as many as 70 percent of Malaysians have bank accounts. For this demographic, the opportunity is in mobile payments and top-up. Malaysia is also home to three million (according to recent estimates) foreign workers from Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia that regularly ...
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Mobile Connects Consumers with Utility Companies... March 4, 2013, 2:44 am
Mobile traffic to electric company websites shot up 16,000 percent in the days after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the US late last year. Millions of people without power turned to their mobiles to get information about outages and when electricity would be restored. The numbers come from Usablenet, a mobile platform that manages websites for Con Edison (which serves New York City and parts of Connecticut) and
Connecticut Light & Power. 16,000 percent is a dramatic proof point for utilities at a time when many are exploring ways to put mobile to work. That’s thousands, maybe millions, of people who got the information they needed without having to talk to a “costly” customer service rep. Think of it that way, and the mobile website or app investment is money well spent. Today, field service and asset management are generally where mobile makes its debut in utility companies (as we have seen with our product Syclo), as technicians use devices to communicate, access information and collect data in the field. However, now end customers are becoming the focus. Innovative utilities are building mobile apps that serve them, ...
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So Much for Bankers’ Hours February 20, 2013, 2:32 am
Banking has come a long way from the famously
inconvenient “bankers’ hours” of years past; i.e. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays.
Increasingly, consumers are doing their banking whenever and wherever they want.
It started with phone banking, ATMs and now, as we know it’s via phones,
tablets and PCs through SMS, websites, and mobile apps. Citibank
reported in October last year that 95 percent of all transactions for Citi
in Asia now occur outside a branch. The branch network as we know it is
changing dramatically and all banks are seeing this trend. Due to competitive pressure and the increasing
demand of the customer, most banks have not had the chance to step back and reconsider
their architecture before rushing to add these new channels. This has lead to
silo channels and an inconsistent view of the customer across products and
lines of business. Customers are demanding increased access,
simplicity and transparency. They want to use whichever channel happens to be
the most convenient at the moment, and a seamless experience between them all—whether
it’s access to products, information, or transactions. More and more, customers
prefer using digital channels over making the trip to a bank ...
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The State of Mobile Money – The 2012 Numbers January 15, 2013, 11:25 am
Came across an interesting report over at Mobile Payments Today on global mobile payment acceptance in 2012. While it's no secret mobile money grew in 2012, the report from yStats shares data on markets we don’t discuss as frequently in the mobile money world including the US and UK. The report looked at mobile payment acceptance in 26 countries including the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, China and others. The report found that mobile payments increased by about 70% in 2012, fuelled by growth in markets such as China, where more than 60 percent of all consumers made at least one mobile payment in the first six months of the year. Countries like South Africa and India are closely following China in adopting mobile payments. According to the report, mobile money is set to explode in North and Latin America, with the firm predicting three digit percentage growth in the next few years in the US and rapid growth in Canada as banks and companies introduce payment systems. In Mexico, the market is relatively untapped and consumers in markets such as Argentina consider mobile payment methods unsafe. With such big market numbers, the potential for these ...
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My letter to Jamie Dimon January 14, 2013, 5:41 pm
In November of last year a group of payment innovators from Silicon Valley (including me) had lunch with Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMC. After meeting Jamie, I wrote him a letter with an idea for how JPMC can help improve financial services to the underserved. Here is that letter. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.
Jamie – thank you for the lunch. It was great company and conversation. Since then I have been thinking about how Chase can help serve the underserved. First of all, the Chase Liquid prepaid program is an excellent product that allows low–balance customers to benefit from an account and debit card without the costs associated with a DDA or frequent NSFs.
Second, assuming that Chase will likely not offer underbanked transactional services at scale, such as check cashing, money orders, short-term credit and international money transfers, through its branch network or online, a big contribution Chase can make to improve the position of the emerging middle class is through a specialized debt facility.
In 2011, $44B of payday loans were issued. These, and related forms of short-term credit, are expensive, don’t offer risk-based pricing, and serve only a derogatory contribution to building credit (even if paid back ...
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My Five Mobile Money Predictions for 2013 January 6, 2013, 10:26 am
As the memories fade of a short holiday and work starts to
ramp up again for the year, I thought it might be interesting to document my
five predictions for mobile money in emerging markets for the year. If nothing
else, it will be interesting to look back in 12 months to see whether I was
accurate, or wildly off the mark! So, at the risk of looking foolish in 2014,
here are my five predictions for the year.
- Pakistan and Bangladesh will become the new
stars of mobile money.
- Agent-initiated over the counter transactions
will be recognised as the ‘killer app’ in mobile money.
- Mobile money interoperability will become a
reality in some markets.
- Google will launch mobile money in more emerging
markets.
- There will be further platform consolidation in
mobile money, potentially leaving only three to four big players.
2013 will be the year people stop talking about M-Pesa, and
start talking about other successes in mobile money. I don’t think I have been
to a conference in the last five years where M-Pesa wasn’t the center of focus.
All credit for what has happened in Kenya, but the industry desperately needs
more stars, and this year I think we will start to see them. We have a huge
growth market for mobile money emerging in ...
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Paying Everywhere with an E-Z Pass? December 27, 2012, 9:15 am
Fast Company featured a great article a couple weeks ago on how E-Z Pass – the toll booth system in the US Northeast – is a rising form of electronic payment. E-Z Pass which is an association of 14 states has nearly 23 million transponders on the road, is attracting a lot of interest as other industries requiring payments realize how very convenient this technology really is. According to the article, right now, the toll payment market mirrors the mobile one in that there's major fragmentation. The industry is working towards interoperability between the systems, and actually are mandated by a law called MAP-21. Once interoperability is achieved, the possibilities for the use of existing toll passes for other payments is very compelling. Especially as these accounts are already in place. If that sounds far fetched, the Fast Company article shares that E-Z-Pass and McDonald's worked together to pilot a system for drive through payments. While McDonald's opted to take another route after they realized they needed to settle payments nightly opposed to weekly as the toll system is set up to do, it goes to show the possibilities. The success or failure of taking the toll infrastructure ...
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2012: The Year of NFC December 19, 2012, 9:15 am
As we wrap up 2012, it's natural to start reflecting back on the year that was, and in looking at mobile technology, NFC was a significant force in the market this past year. NFC wasn't new this year, but it definitely burst in the mainstream. It is estimated that there will be 300 million NFC-enabled smartphones by 2014, which means this opportunity will continue to grow rapidly. What we've seen in 2012 is really just the beginning.
A recent article on the Mobile Entertainment web site does a good job of sharing just some of the successes of NFC this past year in social media, data gathering, mobile gaming, contactless payment and transport. Of course, here at Mobile Money transactions, we are most excited about the possibilities for contactless payment as mobile phones may eventually replace credit or debit cards helping to speed customer transaction time. All the big players in the market are moving to seize upon the possibilities of NFC and with strong motivations — a November 2012 Markets & Markets study pegged the total NFC applications at a value of $10015.96 by 2016.
2013 should be interesting as more players enter the market and NFC ...
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