The second Sunday in December is a peak shopping day for mobile shoppers. In the U.S. mobile gross merchandise volume (GMV) grew 127 percent over the same Sunday last year, generating nearly $5 million in GMV; worldwide, mobile GMV grew 165 percent generating $13 million in GMV. [Read more…]
2010 is the year of the mobile smartphone, and all the useful app’s that go with them.
Back in March, 2010, Laura Kolodny wrote in the New York Times, “Web sites are old school, and mobile is a growing requirement for every industry and business.” iPhone sales have been off the charts, and this week Google’s Andy Rubin wrote that there are 300,000 Android phone activations each day–yes every day!
In July, Shop.org, the National Retail Federation’s digital division, found that “nearly three-quarters (74%) of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. One in five boasts having a fully-implemented mobile strategy in place already.”
Taking your small business mobile could be as easy as creating a simple iPhone app, but more often than not, with competition in the mobile space heating up, it’s likely to be a bit more complicated than that.
Raam Thakrar has outlined the process in an excellent article in Mobile Commerce Daily. Here are some of the key tasks:
Read the complete article: Mobile Commerce Daily.
Yelp may be the raconteur of restaurant recommendations and Foursquare the cardinal of check-ins, but Google has an ace up its sleeve: NFC chips. The company’s embedded near-field communications chips into each and every one of these “Recommended on Google Places” window stickers, which you’ll be able to trigger with a shiny new Nexus S — just hold your handset up to the black dot, and voila, your phone gets a “tag.”
Google’s now distributing the signs on a trial basis to Portland, Oregon businesses as part of a larger Google Places kit, though it doesn’t explain how (or if) they’ll be able to program the chips. Either way, if you own a hot new joint in Portland, you might as well give it a spin. Find the sign-up form at our more coverage link, or peep a Nexus S doing its thing after the break.
via Engadget.
INSIDE Contactless, a provider of semiconductor solutions for secure transactions and digital identity, has announced SecuRead, a complete system-in-package (SIP) NFC solution that allows manufacturers of NFC mobile and other devices to integrate all of the contactless, security and application functions required for a broad range of NFC payment, retail, transit, ID and access control applications.
SecuRead integrates INSIDE’s MicroRead NFC controller with a high-performance security controller from Infineon Technologies and a GlobalPlatform-compliant Java Card operating system from Giesecke & Devrient. SecuRead also integrates INSIDE’s Open NFC protocol stack to provide a best-of-breed solution that helps mobile device manufacturers bring rich NFC capabilities to market more quickly.
“Trusted applications like banking and payment demand the highest level of proven security in their hardware and their operating systems, and this is what our secure element brings to the SecuRead SIP solution”
“Unlike other NFC solutions, which must be integrated from multiple hardware and software providers and are less technically robust, SecuRead truly breaks new ground in the NFC market, providing a one-stop-shop, turn-key solution that mobile device makers can use to enable a broad range of NFC applications in their products,” said Loic Hamon, vice president of products and marketing for NFC at INSIDE Contactless.
“SecuRead offers a superior NFC controller, one of the largest capacity and most flexible secure elements on the market and the leading Java Card OS in a single package, with superior software and technical support from a single, global supplier.”
According to Hamon, INSIDE’s SecuRead already has been selected by a leading mobile device manufacturer for use in NFC mobile device products due out in 2011.
“Trusted applications like banking and payment demand the highest level of proven security in their hardware and their operating systems, and this is what our secure element brings to the SecuRead SIP solution,” said Juergen Spaenkuch, director, platform security at Infineon Technologies. “Infineon’s secure element chip dedicated to NFC applications has been certified to the highest proven security certifications and type approvals such as Common Criteria EAL5+ (high) and EMVCo. The chip also offers an optimized interface to the MicroRead NFC controller, thereby enabling INSIDE to create a superior product to meet current and future requirements of the mobile industry.”
SecuRead offers all the functionality of INSIDE’s third-generation MicroRead v3 silicon—plus the secure element and Java Card OS—in a VQFN-32 package, and is pin-for-pin compatible with the standalone MicroRead product. The on-chip Java Card operating system, based on G&D’s Convego® Join 4, includes the implementation of the GlobalPlatform 2.1.1 specifications, supports the full Java Card 3.0.1 API and is compliant with relevant ISO standards as well as EMV for domestic and international mobile payment. The Java Card Operating system supports core AES cryptography for OSPT standards in the transit fare collection market, and a MIFARE-compliant emulation is provided for compatibility for some transit applications.
SecuRead also supports HID iCLASS virtual credentials and is HID Trusted Identity Platform (TIP)-enabled for access control and emerging mobile applications. The secure element features a powerful secure microcontroller with multitasking capability that stores both code and data in a 144KB non-volatile memory, and is Common Criteria EAL5+ (high) certified and EMVCo approved.
“SecuRead represents another productive partnership with INSIDE Contactless to create an innovative solution for the mobile industry,” said Axel Deininger, head of the payments division at G&D. “Our high-performance Java Card solutions, such as the one employed by SecuRead, are tailored to the specific needs of markets with the highest security requirements such as payment, transit, access control and other mobile applications.”
INSIDE’s SecuRead solution is pre-integrated with INSIDE’s Open NFC, a commercial-grade NFC protocol stack that runs on the application or baseband processor to control SecuRead operation. Open NFC version 3.5 software and source code is available at no cost in Android, Windows Mobile, Linux and Java (JSR-257) editions with API documentation on SourceForge.net. INSIDE also offers a comprehensive suite of NFC payment, transit, loyalty, and access control and identity applets to run on SecuRead, including support for HID iCLASS virtual credentials.
“The new SecuRead best-of-breed solution is the fastest path to implementing iCLASS virtual credentials in NFC mobile phones,” said Dr. Tam Hulusi, senior vice president at HID Global. “Through our longstanding partnership with INSIDE, iCLASS support is now a standard feature of SecuRead. For users looking to put iCLASS virtual credentials on mobile phones, this is great news.”
Source: Business Wire
Discover card has announced that it will issue contactless credit cards and stickers, targeted at early adopters of its mobile technology. The cards, called Discover Zip were sent out to select cardholders during the first two weeks of November. More cards and stickers will be sent to additional cardmembers starting in January 2011.
Discover Zip is an payment solution that enables quick, secure transactions using contactless technology. Consumers simply touch a payment device, which is in the form of either a plastic card or a sticker that can be applied to a mobile phone or any other item, to a Zip-enabled contactless reader to make a payment.
According to Discover, there are more than 100,000 U.S. merchants that offer contactless readers that accept Zip transactions at the point-of-sale, including quick service restaurants, gas station and convenient stores, retailers and pharmacies, and public transit agencies.
“At Discover, we put a high bar on value to the customer, and are always evaluating technology solutions that make things faster, safer, and more convenient for our cardmembers,” said Mark Scarborough, senior vice president of cardmember marketing at Discover. “Given how tied consumers are to their mobile devices, we know they will appreciate the tremendous value and convenience Discover Zip contactless cards and stickers provide.”
Source: Business Wire
Wmode, a provider of managed services such as Smart Portal, App Store, Media Store, and Mobile Payment solutions under the ClearMode brand has licensed StreamWIDE’s next generation technology for telecom value-added-services. With this agreement, Wmode and StreamWIDE will provide carriers with a complete set of managed services including ring back tones, voice messaging, visual voicemail, and call completion services.
The focus of the agreement is on StreamWIDE’s Ringback tones (RBT) solution, a personalized music service gaining global adoption in which Wmode excels as a managed service provider and has developed market leading expertise, and where StreamWIDE provides a state-of-the-art platform based on standard SIP architecture. Through this partnership the StreamWIDE portfolio of applications becomes immediately available to Wmode and their customers, minimizing time to market and providing carriers with a solid ROI.
Wmode, a privately held company based in North America, has been providing technology solutions for mobile operators, media companies and consumer brands for the past ten years. StreamWIDE, a public company based in Europe with offices in Paris, New Jersey and China provides value-added services for mobile and fixed-line telecommunication operators.
Speaking about this new partnership, Wmode CEO, Emanuel Bertolin commented, “Leveraging our license agreement with StreamWIDE, we will be announcing our first North American customer in the coming weeks under the new partnership. We are excited about the opportunities this agreement presents in North America and globally.”
Wmode entered into this licensing agreement with StreamWIDE as it provided the organization with the right approach and flexible technology. Both of these factors allow Wmode to offer its mobile operator customers a seamless and complete RBT solution.
Speaking about the agreement Pascal Beglin, CEO for StreamWIDE said, “We recognized Wmode’s excellence in customer attention and their strong operational culture for running successful managed services for mobile operators, especially their achievements with RBT with Cricket in the US. Together with our carrier-grade technology, our advanced features and our track-record on the telecom market, we believe we can win a large market share for our solutions moving forward with this hosted, managed service option.”
Source: Marketwire
It turns out that the NFC capabilities in Android Gingerbread phones isn’t quite everything we thought it would be. According to a blog post by Jaroslav Stekl on the website Android Police, the NFC with Gingerbread is currently only one-way. It can read data, but not transmit. He adds that the chip supports two-way communication, but Gingerbread does not.
Clearly there’s some extra hype surrounding the Google CEO’s Eric Schmidt’s mention of Gingerbread and NFC during the Web 2.0 Summit, which came around the same time as ATT, T-Mobile, and Verizon’s official announcement about their partnership in the Isis Mobile Payment Network. [Read more…]
While Near Field Communication (NFC) is getting a lot of press lately with the announcement of the Isis partnerships, there are other technologies for mobile payment that don’t require either a specific terminal, nor complex agreements among the various parties.
An example is TagPay, a mobile payment solution developed by a French startup called Tagattitude. The product is based on the NSDT technology (Near Sound Data Transfer), which is simpler to implement than NFC-based systems. The can be used in a variety of applications, such as mobile point-of-sale payment, money transfer, web authentication, or control and authorization of physical access.
More information: Tagattitude
The Miami Parking Authority (MPA) has announced a new Miami Resident Discount program exclusively for customers who live in the City of Miami. Effectively immediately, when drivers pay for parking at MPA on-street meters using Pay by Phone, a 20% discount will automatically be applied to the purchase.
MPA introduced the Pay-by-Phone service in May 2008. With a free Pay by Phone account tied to a customer’s credit or debit card, customers can pay for parking with a single call to an automated system.
More info: Miami Parking Authority and Pay-by-Phone.
Shoppers who have in the past turned to the Internet for their research before heading to brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly melding their online and in-store shopping with the exploding popularity of mobile applications for use on smartphones.
Now shoppers can actually get instant price comparisons online based on their scans of in-store bar codes. For merchants who have the customers in their stores, a mobile sales and marketing strategy can help win over an increasingly “mobile” customer. [Read more…]
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