Category: Telecoms and Media

[Dave Birch] Ah, mobile payments.  What could be simpler than a system like Feed Tribes?  Consumers sign up through the company’s website, establishing an account that’s linked to bank account.  When customers are ready to pay at a participating retailer, they punch a PIN number into a text message and send it to the Feed Tribes SMS short code.   They get back a code that’s good for 15 minutes.  Then the customer gives that code to the cashier, who enters it into a machine at the POS.  This sounds (to me) remarkably similar to all the other pay-by-text services that didn’t work in Europe a decade ago.  I’m sure that Feed Tribes really believe that their payment method is not only convenient for consumers, but also allows merchants to have a closer marketing relationship with their customers.  But it isn’t convenient, and there are better ways to build a relationship with customers.

Technorati Tags: payments

Continue reading “Party like it’s 1999, part 2”

[Dave Birch] I heard the phrase “alternative payment technologies” at a meeting today. I wonder what it means? Payments News noted a report out from Pelorus about alternative payment technologies in the US, predicting 15-fold growth over the next five years. The alternatives they look at include contactless (which I would argue shouldn’t be seen as alternative any longer), smart cards (which are what contactless payment cards are, even in the US), SMS (which is about as mass market as you can get, although I just can’t see taking hold for payments in the developed world), biometrics and NFC. But I’m wondering what they are an alternative to.

Technorati Tags: biometrics, contactless, emv, internet, mobile, nfc, payments, predictions

Continue reading “Alternative to what?”

[Dave Birch] Leo van Hove was the first to point to a super story coming from Japan. If you needed a reminder just how far Europe (and for that the matter, the U.S.) is behind Japan when it comes to digital money, Sony is rolling out a USB contactless interface for the Playstation 3 so that Japanese consumers can pay for online games with their EDY cards and, of course, their Felica-equipped mobile phones.

Technorati Tags: contactless, e-purse, games, internet, mobile

Continue reading “It’s the PayStation 3!”

[Dave Birch] We all know how bullish the analysts are about the mobile/contactless nexus. While technology issues and uncertainties around business models between operators, payment networks and banks will act to slow momentum, Strategy Analytics forecasts that mobile phone based contactless payments will facilitate over $36 billion of worldwide consumer spending by 2011. Meanwhile, over at Javelin, Bruce Cundiff said that “contactless payments will take off when issuers incorporate the payment mechanism into a mobile phone or other portable electronic device“. The two technologies are becoming entwined: the contactless infrastructure being deployed for cards is going to pull mobiles with contactless interfaces (eg, NFC) into the marketplace. (Check out Nokia’s YouTube effort.) What’s not to like about the combination?

Technorati Tags: contactless, mobile

Continue reading “Bullish on mobile”

[Dave Birch] Obviously, security is essential to digital money. But it’s a mistake, I think, to imagine that everything is to do with security. A while back, for example, Stuart Carlaw of ABI said that “Carriers want NFC capability to be built into the so-called SIM card, the network chip that identifies subscribers and runs other key functions on the phone. But banks aren’t convinced SIM cards are secure”. On the other side of this digital divide, a group of fourteen mobile operators have begin working together to develop NFC applications. Is this because Bouygues Telecom, China Mobile, Cingular Wireless, KPN, Mobilkom Austria, Orange, SFR, SK Telecom, Telefonica Móviles España, Telenor, TeliaSonera, TIM, Vodafone and 3 aren’t convinced that EMV is secure. Of course not.

Technorati Tags: mobile, nfc, security

Continue reading “It’s not all about security”

[Jane Adams] Regular readers of this blog will be aware that Dave Birch really, really doesn’t like the folding stuff. I on the other hand, blessed as I am with the jam jar mentality, find it a bit easier to work with than cards which are a bit too much like toy money for my taste. However all that will be moot once we get going with mobile payments, won’t it?

Continue reading “In praise of cash”

[Paul Makin] I trust you all watched Newsnight on BBC TV last night, and saw the piece on mobiles in Africa? One of our favourite digital money in developing country schemes, M-PESA, got some decent coverage, as did Safaricom’s other mobile initiative (farm prices via SMS). You can read about it and watch the programme here.

Technorati Tags: micropayments, mobile

[Dave Birch] It looks as if a medium-term vision for retail payments is coming into focus and it is becoming clear that the symbiosis between the roll-out of payment cards with contactless interfaces, retail terminals that can handle contactless payments and mobile phones with contactless (ie, NFC) interfaces is going to act to accelerate the realisation of a new e-payments environment. There are, though, some elements of the vision that mean that things will change further at POS than simply using the mobile as a phone with a contactless payment card glued to it.

Technorati Tags: emv, payments, retail

Continue reading “Assembling the vision”

[Dave Birch] SK Telecom has launched a latte teleport service in South Korea. Customers using messaging or chat services can buy icons for a Starbucks caramel macchiato, cafe latte, tea latte, juice, a Haagen Dazs single bar, green tea mini cup or foods sold at convenience stores such as (according to the Korea Herald) ham sandwiches and “tinned honeyed water”. The recipient of the icon then downloads a 2D bar code on their mobile and presents it in order to claim the item. Of course, I think that messing around with 2D bar codes will give way to NFC in time but the basic idea of sending stuff from one phone to another will become an integral part of daily life. But where’s the icon for money? Surely one of the most popular teleports will be cash?

Technorati Tags: loyalty, mobile, retail

Continue reading “What’s the icon for cash?”

[Dave Birch] Yet another NFC trial, this time in Strasbourg, involving 200 customers. It’s all very well for ABI Research to predict that in five years from now 30% of all handsets shipped worldwide will be NFC-enabled, but why so much fuss right now? People must be asking why the digital money world spends so much time talking about this technology, when there are no customers out there with NFC phones and no NFC phones in the shops. Look east! When DoCoMo unveiled another 14 handsets with contactless interfaces and both the purse and credit payment schemes (ie, Edy and DCMX) pre-installed, payment service providers in Europe and North America must have started to get the message. DoCoMo now have well over 3 million purse users (yes, I mean users: they have more than 15 million purses out there and the purse has been activated on over 20% of handsets already) and nearly a million DCMX users.

Technorati Tags: contactless, credit cards, e-purse, mobile

Continue reading “Enough with the NFC already!”