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Consumers and Mobile Financial Services – Free Report

Mobile phones have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting, and shopping. Given the rapid pace of developments in the area of mobile finance, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting annual surveys of consumers’ use of mobile financial services in 2011. This 78-page report, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services” (March, 2015) examines trends in the adoption and use of mobile banking, payments, and shopping behavior and how the emergence of mobile financial services affects consumers’ interaction with financial institutions.

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B.Shark Holds Forum on Who Will Play a Leading Roll in Mobile Payments

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B.Shark, a Chinese company offering worldwide mobile payment solutions, recently collaborated with SPforum, the largest microblog dedicated to the Mobile Internet industry in China, to hold a forum about who will play the leading role in worldwide mobile payments. The discussion was lively, and experts from Paypal and Alipay participated, among others.

Some highlights from the forum include:

  • “Telecom Operators, Financial Companies (such as Banks) and third-party payment companies (such as Alipay, Boku, Zong) are playing important roles in mobile payment,” said Mr. Peng, an expert from Paypal.
  • Operators have huge numbers of mobile subscribers and have a good understanding of  the behavior of mobile subscribers; and operators’ customer care centers can also be the customer service centers for mobile payment transactions.
  • The advantage of financial companies is that banks have the best understanding of customers’ payment behavior, and bank branches also can be the place to educate customers about how to use mobile payments.
  • Third-party payment companies, such as Alipay, Boku, Zong, Obopay and Square are playing a more and more important role in mobile payments. “Third-party payment companies always try to improve service for customers and integrate resource from different organizations in the payment value-chain; this is the advantage of third-party payment companies,” said Mr.Ding, an expert from Alipay.

In the area of global payments, mobile payment can be divided into three areas geographically. “In Asian countries, especially Japan and South Korea, with the strong support from operators, a large quantity of applications and services based on NFC drive NFC payment forward; In Africa, only around 20%-30% of adults have bank accounts, mobile payment via telecom networks are successful, M-Pesa in Kenya is an example; In America and Europe, the redit card industry is matured, however operators also try to play a role. For example, Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone, formed a joint venture to accelerate the uptake of mobile commerce in the U.K, and AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon also formed a joint venture mobile company named Isis utilizing near-field communication (NFC) technology in the U.S.A,” said ZhongYuan, Zhang, COO of B.Shark. “The fact that eBay bought Zong for $240 million in cash, shows the value of third-party mobile payments focused on operator billing.”

The mobile payment chain is very long. It includes telecom operators, banks, third-party mobile payment companies, mobile phone producers, etc. When all the parties cooperate, the mobile payment will move faster and more smoothly.