Blog - Payment Industry Insights
| 2012-01-25T16:06:00.000-06:00 Does Square Have A Doppelganger In The UK? Meet mPowa By Ingrid Lunden | January 24, 2012 | PaidContent.org Square, the high-profile mobile payments company started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has yet to launch outside the U.S. But in the meantime, another, similar-looking competitor has sprung up in the UK: mPowa. The new service, due to launch in mid-February, this week opened its doors for pre-registration for “small businesses, traveling salespeople and other hard-working Brits”, to received free, square-shaped dongles that plug into a mobile device to let merchants scan people’s credit and debit cards. Like Square, mPowa will make its money on a fee charged per transaction. Unlike Square, the fee will be lower: 0.25 percent per charge. mPowa says when it goes live it will work on iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry devices. A spokesperson for the company tells paidContent that the apps to make the dongle work on these platforms are still pending approval. The spokesperson declined to say whether any companies have signed up to use the service yet. The start-up’s parent company, Powa, already has a relationship with Barclay’s, which has an exclusive deal to sell Powa’s web-based e-commerce platform to businesses in the UK. Some thought that might mean Barclay’s would also distribute the dongles on behalf of mPowa, too—although this has not been confirmed by either party.(more)  |
| 2012-01-19T15:03:00.000-06:00 PayPal Will Be Expanding Mobile Payments Test To 51 Bay Area Home Depot Stores by Leena Rao | January 18, 2012 | TechCrunch.com PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. Basically, via the pilot customers (for now, this only applies to PayPal employees) are able to pay for items via their PayPal account at Home Depot’s point of sale systems. They can either use a pin code via their mobile phone or a specialized PayPal credit card that can be swiped, the payment amount will be deducted from their PayPal account. The bigger vision of brick and mortar partnerships are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will also have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal will also help retailers use location and transaction data to improve the experience for consumers. As PayPal’s Anuj Nayar told us recently, the Home Depot test program was individually established between PayPal and the big-box retailer, but in the future, PayPal is partnering with point-of-sale software companies to help expand the in-store program to other brick and mortar retailers. The assumption is that the results of the smaller test at Home Depot, which only launched a few weeks ago, must have been positive, so Home Depot is expanding the pilot program. We’re told that PayPal will be partnering with at least 20 other known top-tier retailers for the in-store payments test, which will be unveiled later this year. (more)  |
| 2012-01-11T17:00:00.001-06:00 PayPal Partners With Point-Of-Sale Software Company AJB To Scale In-Store Payments Option To Big Box Retailers by Leena Rao | January 10, 2012 | TechCrunch.com Exclusive: We’ve received more details on how PayPal will be scaling its in-store payments technology at major retailers. As we reported last week, PayPal is currently testing the mobile payments and point-of-sale integrations at Home Depot on a friends and family basis, in five stores. Today, we’ve learned that PayPal is partnering with AJB Software, a company that provides point-of-sale software to large brick and mortar retailers, to integrate the online payments giant’s technology into their offerings. AJB basically provides a communications gateway that connects a retailer’s point-of-sale system with financial institutions. Over 140 large-scale retailers including Kohl’s and BestBuy use AJB’s software to manage payments. In a nutshell, the partnership allows an easy way for big box retailers to offer consumers a way to pay via PayPal in their stores. AJB will build a native PayPal interface within its integrated payment solutions platform. The interface can then be made available to AJB’s retail customer base. AJB’s Retail Transaction Switch will provide the framework to allow the millions of PayPal account numbers to be processed as financial tender by existing and future customers of AJB. Similar to the Home Depot integration, PayPal members will have the option of paying for merchandise by swiping a PayPal Access Card or by entering the mobile telephone number and password associated with their accounts. The integration with AJB’s offerings will roll out in the first quarter of this year, says the companies. While it’s still unclear the exact nature of how PayPal’s in-store integrations will work, the bigger vision of brick and mortar partnerships are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will also have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal will also help retailers use location and transaction data to improve the experience for consumers. For PayPal, this is one way that the company can scale the reach of its in-store payment system without having to partner individually with each retailers. PayPal’s Anuj Nayar tells me that the Home Depot test program was individually established (not via AJB) but going forward, PayPal will be making a number of similar payments ecosystem deals in the coming months to expand the reach of the new payments option. (more)  |
| 2011-12-19T10:39:00.005-06:00 Business Pioneers Inspire, Instruct Executive Students Inaugural C-Level Dinner at Naveen Jindal School of Management Provided One-on-One Networking Nov. 30, 2011 | UTD News Center UT Dallas student Kristie Veal likes new adventures. “I like to know what lies ahead versus what’s familiar,” she said. But the Naveen Jindal School of Management (JSOM) executive graduate student had never envisioned herself as a business trailblazer until a recent networking event inspired her to consider the possibilities. The inaugural C-Level Dinner, held Nov. 11 at the school, introduced her to more than a dozen entrepreneurial executives seasoned in the travails and triumphs of launching their own companies. “Listening to their stories is just inspiring,” Veal said midway through the event, which was sponsored by the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) at UT Dallas and the JSOM-based student Entrepreneurship Club. The various accounts of how the executives built their businesses helped Veal see the potential of some of her own ideas. “I didn’t come in [to the Executive MBA program] to start my own business,” she said. “However, it sounds possible now.” Madison Pedigo, E-Club adviser and assistant director of the school’s innovation and entrepreneurship programs, and E-Club vice president Amrita Choudhury helped organize the dinner to give students one-on-one access to business pioneers. During the event, incoming E-Club president Frank Morrone, called on each executive to tell their story. The evening was full of anecdotes, pep talks, insights and unvarnished truths as the executives described their paths in business. Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo, asked for a show of hands from those who had recently watched a video via a mobile device or computer. “Video is taking over the Internet,” he said as a sea of hands went up. He explained that his Austin-based company creates product videos and captures data analytics after the videos have been posted on websites such as YouTube or retail sites. Students were able to join executives for smaller dinner-table discussions. Jeff Thorness, founder and CEO of ACH Direct in Allen, said he spoke to students at his table about motivation, management skills and how to grow a fledgling business into a fully realized operation. ACH Direct is a check and payment verification processor. He said he was impressed by the students' questions. He said he viewed his invitation to the event as a compliment. “I just couldn’t turn it down,” he said. Graduate student Harold Burman sat with Craig Moore, the retired CEO of Cici’s Pizza who now runs the bakery franchise Nothing Bundt Cakes. Burman said the businessman’s insights were helpful because Burman is interested in franchising. Jim Lafferty, founder and president of medical device company Genesis Biosystems in Lewisville, drew some of the biggest laughs of the evening. His first youthful entrepreneurial effort’s profit strategy was built on “zero cost of doing business.” He sold squirrel tails to neighborhood kids for bicycle handlebar streamers, “25 cents for gray tails and 50 cents for red ones.” His free supplier was his grandfather, a West Virginia coal miner who shot squirrels for food. Pedigo watched as executive graduate student Keith V. Otto and John Jaggers, a partner in the Dallas-based venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds, had a discussion. Unable to pause the conversation, Pedigo was pleased. “This is really good. This is what we wanted – real networking.” (more)  |
| 2011-12-06T13:08:00.001-06:00 Amazon Will Pay Shoppers $5 to Walk Out of Stores Empty-Handed by Tricia Duryee | December 6, 2011 | AllThingsD.com Amazon is offering consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they compare prices using the online giant’s mobile phone application in a store. The promotion goes live Saturday and will serve as a way for Amazon to increase usage of its bar-code-scanning application, while also collecting intelligence on prices in the stores. This holiday season, mobile commerce is surging as more people become comfortable using applications on their phone to compare prices or simply shop when not at home or at work. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, the biggest online shopping day of the year so far, mobile sales reached 6.6 percent, jumping from 2.3 percent in 2010, according to IBM’s online retail study. Amazon is not the only company hoping for a strong mobile Christmas. (more)  |
| 2011-12-01T15:58:00.001-06:00 Trouble brewing for Google Wallet Cherian Abraham | November 29, 2011 | MobilePaymentsToday.com I believe in Google's capability to actually pull off mobile payments. I believe Google does get it. With all its initial failings, its misplaced loyalty towards NFC and the existing payment rails, I believe it truly have a shot at fixing payments and closing the loop in local commerce. Let's look at what is going right for Google: Android is fast becoming the dominant ecosystem on mobile, with over 200 million devices so far and 550,000 activations happening every day. It has made Android a force of nature that is now slowly eating away at Apple's market share. It has a mobile wallet initiative out front at least more than a year before the closest competitor – Isis. It has had some notable successes with retailers (e.g., Gap) and has partnered with New Jersey Transit for payments. Formidable partnerships with Citi, FirstData and MasterCard should be all that is needed to prod more issuers in to joining Google Wallet. Even with all this momentum, Google Wallet does not seem to be having a good day so far. Despite Visa's significant call for EMV in the U.S. by way of threats to shift fraud liabilities to processors (and from there to merchants), balanced equally by the carrot of PCI audit compliance avoidance, NFC still faces considerable challenges to adoption. Apple chose not to include NFC in the iPhone 4S knowing fully that to do so without first creating a compelling offline commerce solution (the strains of which were heard in its recently revamped Retail App enabling easy payments in stores) would be advantageous to Google or others. Rumors abound that the Isis carriers are discouraging Google Wallet from being included on the Android phones provisioned on their networks, which has far reaching implications for both Google and Android. Meanwhile, Amazon has the clout to both build a payments presence and roll it out as part of its forked Android flavor Fire. But more importantly, Google Wallet is lacking what it needs most to make an impact: issuers. (more)  |
| 2011-11-29T16:00:00.001-06:00 Apple, not carriers, will drive NFC growth Smartphones incorporating the payments technology will rise from 10% to 50% of the total, but cellcos' power will erode, say analysts By CAROLINE GABRIEL | 24 November, 2011 | Rethink-Wireless.com Mobile payments based on NFC have been talked up relentlessly this year by the operators, which believe this is a link in the mobile chain they can control because NFC is usually integrated with their SIM cards. But the actual installed base of NFC-enabled handsets remains fairly small, and though it will increase significantly next year, that will mainly be driven by Google Wallet and by other vendor launches. According to research carried out by Taiwan's DigiTimes, which monitors the country's device supply chain, over half of smartphones will support NFC by the end of 2014, compared to less than 10% now. The big change will come with wider Android and Google Wallet support plus the entry of Apple and Microsoft. These will join the existing mobile NFC platforms, Symbian, BlackBerry and bada. The main obstacles to growth, according to DigiTimes' sources, are standardized specifications plus the need for a wider ecosystem. The latter could be delivered by the iPhone 5, which will almost certainly include the m-payments systems, and by Microsoft, which has already promised it for WP7 next year. But the biggest brakes on growth in 2011 have really been a low level of consumer awareness, which has led to merchant apathy in adopting the necessary terminals. This was highlighted by the caution of eBay and its PayPal unit in embracing NFC - the firm is more focused on web-based solutions which do not require new infrastructure in stores. (more)  |