Square will challenge PayPal with its own peer-to-peer cash service
May 21, 2013, 3:47 pm

PayPal may be taking on Square on its home mobile payments turf, but Square figures two can play that game. It has its own peer-to-peer payments in the works that will let users to transfer cash to each other by simply hitting the send button on an email.

A splash page first spotted by TechCrunch on Square’s website shows a demo of the service, which for now is available only to invited users. The demo shows that a registered user only has to send an email to the payment recipient with the dollar amount of the transfer in the subject line and pay@square.com

Flint Swipe-Free Service Enters the Mobile Payments Game
May 21, 2013, 3:42 pm

All you need to do is create an account, link your bank account, and get one of their credit card reader dongles to start swiping credits cards in exchange for your services.

Flint is a similar credit cards payments service and mobile app, but is looking to set itself apart by letting businesses accept credit cards by "scanning" credit card numbers with your iPhone camera. Flint's pitch is that as mobile business owners who are constantly on the move, a tiny credit card dongle may be hard to keep up with. Their service only requires an iPhone to accept credit cards. 

Flint also wants

Making cash transfers work: Some options
May 21, 2013, 3:38 pm

If cash transfers are to fulfil their promise of being a “game changer”, then a paradigm shift has to occur from the supply-to-demand-side subventions. Top driven supply-side interventions get morphed beyond recognition as they pass through several implementation layers.   Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom’s work in developing countries shows how this happens: in the unique culture of India, people rely more on locally crafted “rules in use”, as opposed to drilled down “rules in form”. And such transformation can be reduced by minimizing the distance between the rules in form and use. This can happen, for example, by giving greater choice to the

Vesta Introduces New Mobile Wallet for Prepaid Operators featuring Integrated Suite of Financial Services
May 21, 2013, 3:24 pm

Powered by partnerships with leading consumer brands Xoom, PreCash and Prepaid.com, the app builds on Vesta’s core account reload platform to include money transfer, bill payment and international top-up services. By leveraging a customer’s top-up account details, the combined experience delivers an easier to use, more cost-effective solution than retail-based alternatives. 

There are 68 million unbanked and under-banked consumers in the U.S. and the majority of these are prepaid mobile subscribers, according to the FDIC. These consumers regularly use alternative financial services, which today are almost entirely cash-and retail-based. By offering the Vesta PayMobile wallet, mobile network operators (MNOs) can

Why Mobile Commerce Is Set To Explode
May 17, 2013, 4:17 pm

As recently as late 2010, mobile commerce was only 3% of e-commerce. By the end of last year's holiday shopping season, that number had risen to 11%, according to comScore.

That's approximately $18.6 billion in consumer spending - and that doesn't even include travel-related purchases, which comScore counts separately. Thanks in part to a new ecosystem of retail and shopping apps, mobile-generated retail spend could rise to 15% of retail e-commerce by the end of this year.

Mobile payments service from PayPal is rolled out with free processing
May 17, 2013, 4:13 pm

Among the latest mobile payments news headlines that are being made is the announcement that has been made by PayPal that it is hoping to attract more businesses to use its POS credit card processing service by offering these transactions for free for the rest of the year.

The announcement from PayPal has raised a number of brows as it has offered free mobile payments card processing by way of its Cash for Registers program until the close of 2013. The hope is

The Future of Mobile Payments in Canada is Already Here
May 17, 2013, 4:05 pm

Techvibes had the chance to sit down with Colfer to talk about the changing face of payments in Canada before his session on this topic at Mesh13 this week.

According to Colfer, the key ingredient for mobile payments lies within a protocol called NFC or near field communications. Visa is focused on NFC because it is today what the plastic card was back in the 50s: a common standard which could be used by anyone to purchase anything, anywhere.

“The original Visa promise was that you could use this piece of plastic anywhere with zero-liability. The solution was scalable and interoperable. The only

Rwanda: Fingerprint Banking Launched
May 17, 2013, 3:58 pm

MobiCash is a universal payment solution that allows customers to open and access virtual bank accounts through which they can save their money, send or transfer money or make payments.

With MobiCash all monetary transactions can be done exclusively with the account owner's fingerprint without the need of cash or any card.

The financial banking product, that seeks to bring financial services closer to the majority of the population, uses multi-factor authentication mechanisms, including Near Sound Data Transfer (NSDT), a sound-based mobile transaction technology, Near field communication (NFC) and voice biometrics technology.

The fingerprint reader recognises the identity of a person and interprets it

MasterCard, Telefónica first mobile money service set to launch
May 17, 2013, 3:52 pm

The service will be available to subscribers of Vivo, Telefónica's brand in Brazil. Those cusomers will be able to access a prepaid account on their phone to transfer money, buy credits for Vivo's prepaid mobile phones and pay bills.

Another option is to use a prepaid card from MasterCard connected to the same prepaid account. With the prepaid plastic, users can pay offline or withdraw money from ATMs.

"Brazil is a country that loves and invests in technology and has a big number of people without access to financial services ... the so-called unbanked population," said MFS president Marcos Etchegoyen. Zuum has arrived to

Tablets coming to dominate mobile commerce
May 16, 2013, 2:46 pm

Mobile payments may be becoming more common as more consumers become reliant on mobile technology, but whether tablets or smartphone are more favored for online shopping has remained something of a mystery for some time. Smartphones have long held a dominant presence in the field of mobile commerce as many consumers often use these devices while shopping to search for and purchase products. A new report from Forrester Research, a leading market research firm, suggests that tablets may soon replace smartphones for this purpose.

BNP launches full-service mobile bank
May 16, 2013, 2:37 pm

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Hello Bank starts with zero customers but aims to have 1.4m by 2017 in Germany, Belgium, France and Italy. The bank launched on Thursday in the first two countries, with France to follow next month and Italy in October.

Banks in France are looking for new customers in the face of stagnant or declining revenue growth in the domestic retail business because of the contraction in the economy and falling demand for loans.

Chris Harvey, global head of financial services at Deloitte, the

eBay is no longer an m-commerce or e-commerce retailer
May 16, 2013, 2:00 pm

"eBay is no longer a standalone outlet, it fits into the way people shop. They research on their mobiles or laptops and purchase in store or vice versa, they make the final purchase online, and the catalyst behind this is mobile and how it's really changed ecosystem of retail."

von Schirmeister adds that mobile has in effect breathed new life into physical retail and has "fundamentally changed" the commerce landscape which means retailers no longer have a choice they're "obliged to have an online presence"

Of the way technology, and eBay, has reinvented bricks and mortar stores, von Schirmeister discussed North American pilot

Telco giants join forces on e-money services
May 16, 2013, 11:51 am

PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel), PT Indosat (ISAT) and PT XL Axiata (EXCL) launched the initiative, called e-money interoperability, with the support of the Bank of Indonesia on Wednesday.

The three operators now have their own e-money service — Telkomsel with TCASH, Indosat has Dompetku and XL operates XL Tunai.

Under this initiative, a subscriber with an electronic wallet (e-wallet) account with one operator could send money to the e-wallet run by another subscriber. Previously, operators managed their own e-wallets exclusively.

Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, said the initiative would drive financial inclusion through technological connectivity.

Google Wallet Now Allows Users to Transfer Money Via Gmail
May 16, 2013, 11:43 am

The email payment functionality was one of the few interesting announcements by Google at the I/O conference in Moscone Centre West. Interestingly, digital payment will finally become as easy as attaching a file or a picture with an email.  Money could be send to people who are not using Facebook as well.

According to the Google Wallet site, US users who are 18 years and older will be the first beneficiaries of the feature which will roll out within a couple of months. It will be free for users whose bank account is linked to Google Wallet and for those who are using a Google Wallet prepaid account. If

Apps, HTML5 and m-commerce among key mobile challenges facing businesses: report
May 15, 2013, 4:25 pm

The key themes and findings from the roundtable discussions have been published today in our free-to-access Mobile Experience Trends Briefing, sponsored by IBM Tealeaf.

Alongside details of the trends that emerged from the event, the briefing includes best practice tips, case studies and market data.

A separate report highlighted the scale of the challenge facing businesses, as despite the massive growth in mobile traffic almost half (45%) of companies still don’t have a mobile-optimised site or app.

According to IBM Tealeaf VP of mobile product management, Bill Loller:

The overriding message from this year’s Digital Cream is that a viable mobile strategy is not

Mobile payment solutions have now been launched by VeriFone and Pinnacle
May 15, 2013, 4:21 pm

VeriFone Systems Inc. and The Pinnacle Corp. have both announced their launches of brand new mobile payments solutions for the retail market space, at a time when these unveilings are being made with increasing speed by various entrants to this ecosystem.

Pinnacle is an automated technology provider for the petroleum and convenience store industries. It entered into a partnership with the National Payment Card Association (NPCA) in order to be able to launch the Pinnacle Palm POS mobile payments service.

Canada’s three biggest mobile payment questions, answered
May 15, 2013, 4:04 pm

This week at the Canada 3.0 conference I had an opportunity to lead a session that looked at what near-field communications (NFC) technology will mean for all kinds of transactions between banks, retail stores, independent merchants at fairgrounds and, of course, consumers. The timing seemed right: CIBC launched an NFC payment system with Rogers late last year. RBC and Bell announced they would enter the fray later this summer. And yet Apple’s Tim Cook has dismissed NFC as being in its very early days. The resignation of a key exec responsible for Google Wallet has raised questions about its

Mobile Payments Startup ZooZ Debuts In-Ad Payments (Yes, “Ad” Not “App”)
May 15, 2013, 3:42 pm

The big idea here is to streamline the checkout process for consumers by addressing some of the challenges with e-commerce on mobile’s small screen, and now connecting that process to mobile banner ads to increase click-to-buy conversions.

With in-ad payments, mobile users will be able checkout by tapping once on a visible banner ad within a mobile app, which then launches ZooZ’s checkout flow. As with ZooZ’s previously launched in-app payments product, the fully native checkout experience here doesn’t require the end user to re-enter their credit card or payment details after their initial sign-up.

For those unfamiliar with ZooZ, the company has been focused

New Cash Registers Are Sexy, But What’s Beneath the Counter Matters More
May 15, 2013, 3:15 pm

Instead, Dorsey unveiled a cash register stand.

Which, as banal as that sounds, turns out to be kind of a big deal. Certainly it’s the most elegant cash register stand ever made (though I’m also partial to the wooden, Dorsey-commissioned IntraStand). The Square Stand cradles an iPad running Square’s register app. A credit card reader is built into the base. The stand can also connect to a receipt printer and a cash drawer. Based on appearances and apparent usability, it’s the coolest cash register available. And at $299 off the shelf, it’s a seemingly dead-simple, far cheaper out-of-the-box way for a small

M-commerce is disappointing British consumers
May 14, 2013, 3:40 pm

A recent study is showing that about half of all people in the United Kingdom who have tried m-commerce find that the shopping experience over that channel is falling short of their expectations.

The survey results showed that among people from the United Kingdom who use m-commerce for shopping, the ways in which the experience was falling short of their expectations were in the speed of use (49 percent) and in the failure to provide simple, functional and practical navigation on a site (48 percent).

PayZang Announces New Healthcare Payment Solutions
May 14, 2013, 3:37 pm

PayZang announces new healthcare payment solutions for the healthcare industry. As a comprehensive merchant services provider, PayZang addresses the needs of all healthcare companies and professionals by offering customizable payment options. From a small scale private practice to a large healthcare network organization, PayZang has services suitable for all doctors, clinics, and hospitals. Several features of PayZang’s pay-as-you-go model create a streamlined functionality that will benefit the healthcare industry as follows:

Virtual Terminal: With PayZang, your computer is your credit card terminal. The straightforward user interface means ease-of-use, accuracy, and faster transaction processing. Total access to this premium software means any

Mobile payments don't depend on Apple, but Apple will soon depend on mobile payments
May 14, 2013, 3:34 pm

1. Apple CEO Tim Cook says mobile payments are in their infancy. *buzz* Wrong! 

Actually, mobile payments are at the precipice of mass adoption. Just consider a few things which grew and evolved over the past few years. Currently, 20 of the top 20 banking institutions offer mobile payments in some way. All the top card associations such as Visa and MasterCard have a commercial-grade offering for mobile payments that can be used today. There are now millions of payment terminals available today to be used on over 200 million phones capable of offering mobile payments on nearly one-sixth of all major retail

Real-time payments offer new revenue opportunities for banks
May 14, 2013, 3:27 pm

Among other findings, the study reveals that the most positive responses to real-time payments are among people that are most sensitive to payment timing, such as outbound foreign money transfer users.

The study, conducted by global market research provider Ipsos Vantis, on behalf of FIS, gauged consumer sentiments and potential economic value for banks that instantly authorize and settle transactions in four key market groups: outbound foreign money transfer users, account-to-account (A2A) transfer users, person-to-person (P2P) payment users and online bill payers. The study sought to better understand the challenges consumers face with payments and how institutions can derive bottom-line benefits by providing

Ericsson builds scale for its m-commerce platform
May 14, 2013, 3:23 pm

Many interest groups are fighting for pole position in the mobile commerce value chain, but as operators, credit card giants and web players battle for the consumer relationship, Ericsson is determined to be the power behind the throne. The vendor has a growing business in providing the platforms which power vital behind-the-scenes activities like powering exchanges so services from different carriers can interact seamlessly.

The latest win for its M-Commerce Interconnect offering is a deal with Eurogiro, which will enable more than 60 banks and post offices worldwide to process their mobile transactions through the Swedish firm's platform. The

Amazon Files For Mobile Payments System Patent
May 13, 2013, 5:29 pm

The system would be a stark change to current online consumerism, which usually requires physical and email addresses and other personal information to be submitted to a vendor in the course of a transaction.

Under the terms of the proposed payments system, Amazon would serve as the middleman for consumers, handling transactions and shipping without requiring consumers to give any information — not even their name — to the seller.

News of the new system came when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the application earlier this month.

EyeVerify Unlocks Mobile Market Opportunities for Financial Services Industry With Eyeprint Verification System
May 13, 2013, 5:25 pm

Banks, credit unions, investment firms, payment systems and other players can now use the Eyeprint to secure their employees' access to vital corporate systems, to secure enterprise customers' ability to make large transactions and to secure consumers' retail financial activity.

According to a recent study by the US Federal Reserve, concerns about the security of technology were the primary reason given by those not using mobile payments (42%) and the second most common reason given by those not using mobile banking (48%).

"We are impressed by the desire of firms in the banking and financial services industry to replace complex, vulnerable pin and

Tablets More M-Commerce-Friendly Than Phones
May 13, 2013, 4:58 pm

That finding on mobile shopping attributed the higher share of sales on tablets to their larger screens, which make them more PC-like and conducive to online buying.

The Forrester report doesn’t yet include tablet-based transactions in its forecast for mobile retail sales. It projects that m-commerce -- on smartphones only -- will more than double from $12 billion this year to $27 billion by 2016. While growing quickly, mobile retail will remain a small portion of total U.S. e-commerce sales -- rising from 5% to 8% in the next three years.

What’s holding back higher retail spending on smartphones?

Non-optimized mobile sites, concerns about mobile payments

Apple's next trump card is mobile payments
May 13, 2013, 4:48 pm

Since hitting a 52-week low of $385.10 on April 19, shares of Apple (AAPL +0.39%) have recovered somewhat and have stayed above $450 thus far in May.
It seems like investors are slowly but surely regaining their confidence in the Cupertino, California-based company, whose stock had taken a hammering in the months leading up to April 19 because of falling gross margins, a perceived lack of new ideas and increased competition from Korean rival Samsung (SSNLF -5.32%).
"I think a year ago when Apple stock was on its sort of unstoppable run-up toward $700 per share, a lot of people on Wall Street

Groupon Unveils Groupon POS, An iPad App And Dashboard For On-Site, Mobile Payments
May 13, 2013, 4:42 pm

The focus on expanding beyond daily deals, which was originally ex-CEO Andrew Mason’s strategy, shows that even though Mason has departed the company, they are still pushing forward with Groupon’s payments strategy to becoming a “operating system for local commerce.” In addition, this is evidence that the daily deal site will continue to push mobile services. In Groupon’s Q1 earnings report, the site revealed that it had 41.7 million active users – meaning those that have purchased a Groupon offer in the last 12 months. In North America, still the company’s largest single market, some 45% of transactions were completed on mobile devices,