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.
10 Reasons Why Google Wallet Will Fail
Google Wallet is the search engine’s ambitious play to push mobile payments into the mainstream. When the service goes live in New York and San Francisco this summer, users will download the Google Wallet application from the Android Market and provision either a Citi MasterCard or Google prepaid card to work with the app and the NFC (near-field communications) chip on their phone. Shoppers may then just tap to pay for goods on NFC-supporting point-of-sale terminals in more than 311,000 retail stores worldwide that offer MasterCard’s PayPass service. Wallet needs a raison d’etre or else it’s just another niche, erstwhile payment play. [Read more…]
AisleBuyer Raises $7.5 Million in Series E Funding Round
AisleBuyer LLC, a provider of mobile self-checkout and mobile commerce solutions, announced that it has raised $7.5 million in equity funding. This round of financing comes from AisleBuyer’s lead investor Old Willow Partners, LLC, which also provided the company’s first round of funding in 2010. Old Willow Partners is a founding investor in Magnitude Networks, Starbelly, Rivenet, InnerWorkings, Echo Global Logistics, Mediabank, Forseva and Groupon.
“With AisleBuyer launching retail brands representing 19,000 store locations this year alone, I’m excited to see the impact on the in-store customer experience,” said Rich Heise, Manager of Old Willow Partners. “AisleBuyer is disrupting the retail world through game-changers such as Card Capture, multi-channel checkout and other developments on the horizon.”
Following its first round of financing, AisleBuyer announced several new mobile commerce features, including the introduction of multi-channel checkout to its mobile self-checkout app. This addition allows shoppers to order items through a retailer’s website while simultaneously purchasing physical items in a store. AisleBuyer also recently announced its Card Capture technology, which allows customers to scan their credit cards instead of manually entering payment information.
“With nearly 60 percent of retailers adopting mobile store associate technology this year alone, it is clear that retailers recognize the importance of mobile in-store technology,” said Andrew Paradise, CEO of AisleBuyer. “We are poised to be a leader in the mobile payments industry with the opening of our Palo Alto office, the addition of several key team members and new product features.”
The funding will be used for product development, expanding the engineering and sales teams and rolling out new customers across the country.
Source: AisleBuyer
Mobile Payment Dangers
It’s been hard not to miss the steady stream of news suggesting that some time soon the U.S. will catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to using mobile phones and other devices as digital wallets. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, the idea of mobile payments is pretty simple: You go to a store, and rather than whipping out cash or plastic, you offer up your cell phone, which pays for your purchase and charges a credit card that you’ve used to open your mobile phone bank (as it were)… What some refer to as “contactless payment” makes spending remarkably easy, which is why the two of us, progress lovers both, are at least a little nervous about the implications of this technology. Our concern is based on an ur-principle of behavioral economics — mental accounting. [Read more…]
Verizon Wireless and Payfone to Implement Verizon Mobile Payment System
Verizon Wireless and Payfone, a leading mobile payment processing service, today announced the companies are working together to bring a new mobile payment system to Verizon Wireless customers. When available, the service will allow Verizon Wireless customers to make online purchases from their smartphones, tablets and PCs using numerous payment methods, including charging purchases to their monthly wireless statements or using traditional payment methods through financial institution partners. [Read more…]
Visa Acquires Fundamo for Greater Foothold in Develping Market Mobile Banking
Visa Inc. today announced that it is acquiring Fundamo, a leading platform provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies. It also announced a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise plc (LSE: MONI.L), a leading provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed geographies. [Read more…]
Fiserv Expands Digital Payment Suite
Fiserv, Inc. , announced today that the CheckFree RXP money movement platform has been expanded to support account-to-account transfers and same-day bill payments. These new functionalities integrate with the existing bill payment and person-to-person payment capabilities available through CheckFree RXP to create a digital payments suite for financial institutions. While the elements of this suite can be utilized a la carte, they are designed to drive increased transactions when offered together. [Read more…]
Sing Lee Software Mobile Payment Business Grows to 140,000
Sing Lee Software Limited, a leading financial software developer in China, announced its mobile payment operational statistics for the month ended 31 May 2011.
With the continued introduction of mobile payment products in China and the close cooperation between the Group and China UnionPay Co., Ltd (“China UnionPay”), the Group’s mobile payment business has enjoyed skyrocketing growth since its market debut. For the month ended 31 May 2011, the number of mobile payment customers of the Group has surged to 142,830, including 77,436* active customers. [Read more…]
Vinod Khosla Joins Mobile Payment Company, Square
Square announced today that venture capitalist Vinod Khosla will join its board of directors. Khosla is already an investor in the mobile payment platform via his venture firm Khosla Ventures, which led Square’s initial financing round and participated in the Series B round last January. Square has raised a total of $37.5 million from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Sequoia Capital and Visa since its founding in February 2009. [Read more…]
NuWallet Announces Auto-Fill App for Mobile Checkout in Seconds
NuWallet announced today it has solved the most annoying obstacle for on-line shoppers using their mobile phone for purchases.
According to a recent survey by Adobe Scene7 , “ easy checkout” was singled out as the most important mobile-shopping feature among respondents. The mobile shopping experience today is greatly hindered by the difficult and time-consuming task of entering 100+ characters of billing information using the cumbersome mobile keyboard. [Read more…]
Mobile Payments Need to Be More Secure, Says CS Prof
CYBER security experts say mobile payment technology is developing unchecked and it is time governments stepped in to ensure the system is safe for consumers to use. Adjunct professor of computer science at QUT, Bill Caelli, said big business was sacrificing security for convenience.
“We have an explosion of these types of products coming out which are based on providing payments and services on the smartphone,” he said. “It’s happening in a totally unregulated, laissez-faire, free-market environment.”
via Courier Mail.