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.
mFoundry Named Entrepreneurial Company of the Year by Frost and Sullivan
The mobile banking and payments industry in the United States faces many challenges, including positioning mobile banking as a strategic differentiation tool, integrating multiple categories of mobile financial services in a coherent framework, and the challenges of a one-size-fits-all-strategy.
Other challenges include offering a consistent experience across all banking modes, allocating resources towards pursuing new opportunities by taking a long-term view of the market potential, establishing strategic agreements with the traditional financial processing organizations to leverage their strong capabilities in enabling banking and payments, and providing in-depth reporting and feedback to the customer financial institutions (FIs).
Recently, Frost & Sullivan analyzed the mobile banking market, and has awarded mFoundry with its Entrepreneurial Company of the Year award for the company’s strong performance in the past 12 months and continued execution on highly differentiating growth strategies.
“mFoundry has emerged as a preferred provider of mobile banking and payment services in the U.S. mobile financial services markets,” notes Frost & Sullivan senior analyst Vikrant Gandhi. “What sets the company apart from competitors is its ability to continuously evolve in line with the changing needs of the customers and seamlessly update its platform with minimal disruption to its installed base of users.”
mFoundry has adopted a few highly effective growth strategies to achieve success. Firstly, it provides a capable, scalable and secure set of offerings targeted at different types of FIs (both large and small) with a clear, phased roadmap for associated mobile banking and mobile payment services.
The software offers one of the most comprehensive sets of analytics and reporting capabilities. Next, mFoundry has established the largest partner network in the industry by partnering with leading financial processors, credit card associations and other financial powerhouses – resulting in an average of more than 15 new customer additions per month. This also allows channel partners to rapidly deploy mFoundry-powered mobile banking solutions among their customer base
Most importantly, the company demonstrates a willingness and ability to refine its go-to-market strategy to keep pace with the rapid pace of evolutions of the mobile ecosystem – for instance, it continuously offers support for next-generation Smartphones and emerging devices to ensure a broad coverage for its customers (the FIs). Today, mFoundry works with more than 265 banks, credit unions, and issuers in the United States and continues to rapidly increase its customer base for both mobile banking and mobile payments services.
mFoundry has several innovations to its credit. It powers the Starbucks mobile gift card payment application in the United States, which is the largest such initiative of its kind. This has given the company tremendous credibility as it is the only m-banking company that has a live mobile payments solution of this scale in the United States. Other innovations that are in trials, or are already commercially available, include rich analytics, mobile remote deposit, mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, near field communications (NFC) implementations, and others.
“The roadmap for the competition’s services in mobile banking and payments is not yet clear, and mFoundry is clearly a leader when it comes to providing innovative, high-potential, growth-oriented mobile financial services,” asserts Gandhi. “The fact that leading financial processors are willing to partner closely with mFoundry is a validation in itself, and speaks volumes about the company’s aggressive pursuit of excellence on the product, marketing and sales fronts.”
According to the company, mFoundry provides value to customers in multiple ways. It enables banks, credit unions, and issuers to start using the mobile channel with ease and get comprehensive reporting and feedback to understand and fine-tune their offerings on an ongoing basis to achieve the best results. The company also provides FIs with avenues to offer a wide range of banking and payment services to all customers. Finally, mFoundry offers multiple deployment options as well as solutions that are modular and extensible platforms to mobilize the future mobile banking and payment services.
Be it mobile payments, analytics, configurable console-based implementations, or others, mFoundry has always been known as the ‘company to watch’ in the U.S. mobile banking and mobile payments markets. Its ability to introduce successful next-generation mobile financial services before others makes the company a key enabler in this space and the worthy recipient of the 2010 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Entrepreneurial Company of the Year in mobile banking.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated Entrepreneur Spirit by devising a strong growth strategy and robustly implementing it. The recipient has shown strength in terms of innovation in products and technologies, leadership in customer value as well as market penetration and speedy response to market needs. in short, the award looks at the emerging market players in the industry and recognizes their best practices that are positioned for future growth excellence.
Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
North American Bancard (NAB) Launches Pay Anywhere Mobile Payment App
North American Bancard (NAB) announced today the launch of its Pay Anywhere mobile payment application, which allows users to process credit card payments via mobile devices. NAB currently processes more than $10 billion in electronic transactions annually for more than 100,000 merchants nationwide.
“Until now people have had to compromise when picking a mobile payment option. While some are flashy and free, they can lack critical financial and security resources on the back-end. Others offer the reliability many consumers want, but are cost-prohibitive,” said Marc Gardner, NAB founder and president.
“Pay Anywhere is the first to offer the best of both worlds – superior hardware and technology, ease-of-use, an affordable pay-as-you-go platform and the peace-of-mind that comes with NAB’s nearly 20 years of credit card processing experience.”
The Pay Anywhere application is free from Apple’s App Store. Upon approval of a merchant account, the card reader accessory, which usually retails for $149.95, also will be given to users free. The card reader is included so that users can swipe cards to receive lower transaction rates.
Pay Anywhere’s application is backed by 24/7 support, NAB’s 400-person staff and nearly 20 years of credit card processing experience. Pay Anywhere uses the highest available level of encryption and the strictest standards of payment card industry security.
Cost and Fees:
- No setup fees
- No application fees
- No monthly service fees
- No cancellation fees at any time
- No monthly minimums required
Pay Anywhere charges a flat fee of 19 cents per transaction, and 2.69% and 3.49% in service costs for swiped and keyed entries, respectively.
The Pay Anywhere application is currently available for Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 users, as well as the Apple iPad and iPod Touch, and will soon be available for Android and BlackBerry mobile customers. The card reader accessory is currently available for iPhone 3G and 3GS, with an audio jack accessory for iPhone 4, the iPad and iPod Touch coming soon. Pay Anywhere accepts all major credit cards.
The free Pay Anywhere app can be set up in a few minutes. Pay Anywhere users can set default tax and tip percentages, inventory and categorize items and services, take advantage of real-time sales tracking and reporting and “go green” with custom e-mail receipts.
“We want Pay Anywhere users to be confident every time they sell a product or service or pay for one, so we made the same NAB professional resources and expertise that our business customers receive accessible to everyone,” continued Gardner. “In addition to the free app and free reader, Pay Anywhere merchants will only pay when they use the service. If their business is seasonal and they process transactions only three months of the year, they pay nothing for the other nine months.”
More information: Pay Anywhere
HTC Invests in Shanghai F-road
HTC Corporation is continuing its investment in mobile communications service and technologies. Lately, the company announced to invest USD 5.5 million in Shanghai F-road Commercial Services Co., Ltd., a mobile payment service provider in Mainland China. HTC will have a seat in the board of Shanghai F-road. Earlier, in November 2010, the company put USD 2.5 million in NetQin Mobile Inc., a leading provider of mobile security services.
Since Web sites of banks are easy to be attacked by hackers, Shanghai F-road develops mobile bankcards in combination with SIM cards and chips, which will be connected with the data centers of banks and avoid security risks. Currently, the company’s customers include rural commercial banks in Jiangsu and Chongqing.
Asia-Pacific Mobile Payments to Double in Five Years
Mobile payments (m-payments) in Asia-Pacific are expected to record transactions worth more than two-fold from 2009 revenues of US$1.6 billion in five years, according to Frost & Sullivan. The company estimates that in 2015 m-payments could exceed billings of US$3.6 billion at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14.8 percent (2010-2015).
Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Shaker Amin attributes this growth to technology innovations and operators’ initiatives – particularly with NFC (Near Field Communication) – as well as rising consumer demand in both the developed and emerging markets.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Payments Outlook – 18 Asia-Pac nations including Japan, finds that contactless payments via the NFC channel will increase in popularity to account for 23 percent of all m-payments in 2015, from only 12 percent last year.
via Frost & Sullivan
Will Facebook Disrupt Mobile Payment Business?
Facebook may be seeing positive cashflow and excellent rates of growth, but it’s also dismally unprofitable considering the size of its user base. That gives it the impetus for an all-out mobile payments push. It’s already primed for success: with about 100 million active users in the U.S., it already reaches about half the population between ages 15 and 64, and it already has those users accustomed to using their Facebook credentials all over the Web. Its Facebook Connect portable gateway technology has already been adopted by 80,000 websites, says Facebook, including giants like MySpace and YouTube.
But other players are trying to wrest the payments market from Facebook’s sleepy grasp. American Express just spent $300 million buying online payments startup Revolution Money Inc., a pet project of AOL founder Steve Case. Nokia spent $70 million on its Obopay stake, and venture-backed Boku acquired two smaller competitors this summer for an undisclosed sum.
via BNET.
U.K.’s Premier Inn Launches New App for Booking Rooms via Smartphone
The UK’s largest budget hotel chain, Premier Inn, just launched a new smartphone app that allows the company’s customers to book, check and manage their hotel bookings.
The app lets customers manage their booking from start to finish, and is available on iPhone, Android, Nokia and Blackberry smart phones. The app is free to download and will feature real-time availability of all 590 Premier Inn hotels, as well as the option to access photographs of every hotel and pinpoint them on a map.
Steve Conway, who leads innovation at Premier Inn, says “Premier Inn is the first budget hotel chain to produce an app that is available across all smart phones, helping to make us accessible to as many guests as possible whilst on the go. We aim to help guests with every aspect of their stay and the new app will give guests even more freedom to access or to make a hotel booking at any given time.”
Source: Premier Inn
Intuit to Offer Free GoPayment Mobile Payment Card Reader to Businesses
Intuit plans to offer its GoPayment mobile payment service with a free credit card reader and no monthly service fees to business owners who sign up by mid-February.
“By offering a free card reader and no monthly service fees, we want to give more small businesses a head start in the New Year by enabling them to take mobile payments without any upfront investment,” said Chris Hylen, general manager of Intuit’s Payment Solutions division. “And this is just the beginning. We’ll introduce new ways all year long to help more small businesses get paid quickly and inexpensively using their favorite mobile devices.”
GoPayment is compatible with more than 40 popular mobile handsets and a range of credit card readers. This includes a free credit card reader from ROAM Data, which works on a variety of iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices, to make it easier for the cost-conscious new business owner to start taking mobile payments. There are also other robust, professional readers, including the new, sleek, form-fitting mophie credit card reader for the iPhone 4, for established businesses with higher processing volume. A list of supported devices is available at: www.gopayment.com.
Since GoPayment launched nearly two years ago, small businesses have processed nearly $80 million in mobile payments using the solution. And the mobile payments market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.
“We expect the point-of-sale mobile payments market in the U.S. to grow to $55 billion by 2015, up from an estimated $1 billion in 2010,” said Gwenn Bézard of Aite Group. “Intuit is among the best-positioned providers to lead that market, because of its existing presence in acquiring, its accounting and personal finance solutions, and its trusted brand.”
Using GoPayment and a supported credit card reader, users can swipe and process credit cards within seconds instead of entering card data manually. Funds are then deposited into their bank account typically within two to three business days.
“GoPayment gets small business owners paid fast,” added Hylen. “We don’t have any arbitrary transaction caps that delay users from getting their money. Plus, we’re always there if you need us and have people available 24/7 to answer your questions so you don’t lose a sale.”
To save more time when processing payments, GoPayment includes customer-requested features such as the ability to create and sell from a list of frequently sold items, apply sales tax and send customized receipts via text and e-mail with a map of where the transaction took place.
For the more than 4 million small businesses that use QuickBooks, GoPayment can also sync transactions with recent versions of QuickBooks – both PC and Mac – to save time by reducing manual data entry.
The solution protects customer data throughout the payment process. Sensitive credit card data is never stored on the phone. In addition, card data is double encrypted – once via card reader and a second time via the GoPayment app.
GoPayment offers different discount rates and pricing plans depending on a business’s processing needs. Businesses that sign up for GoPayment before mid-February can get a free credit card reader while supplies last and choose one of the following pricing plans:
For lower or intermittent credit card processing volume:
- No monthly service fee for businesses that sign up before mid-February; Discount rates: 2.7 percent for card swiped; 3.7 percent for both key entered and non-qualified transactions; $0.15 per transaction.
For higher credit card processing volume:
- $12.95 monthly service fee; Discount rates: 1.7 percent for card swiped; 2.7 percent for key entered; and 3.7 percent for non-qualified transactions, such as corporate cards; $0.30 per transaction.
GoPayment has no long-term contracts, cancellation, gateway or set-up fees, and one account can enable up to 50 users. To receive the free offer, businesses must be a new Intuit Merchant Service customer and approved for an Intuit merchant account. Terms, conditions, pricing, features, service and support are also subject to change without notice.
More information: www.GoPayment.com.
Megapay and MJV Launch Brazil Mobile Payment Service
Megapay, a division of Hong Kong based cloud computing giant Megaworld, in partership with MJV, a Brazilian company that combines technology services and mobile solutions, have launched a mobile payment services in the Brazilian market.
Using Megapay’s and MJV’s technologies, Megaworld’s Brazilian customers are now able to make payments for any Megaworld service via mobile phone by submitting their phone number to Megapay’s payment platform. The customers are securely authenticated through a web PIN sent to their mobile phone via SMS, allowing them to immediately enjoy unlimited access to Megaworld premium services. Megapay’s service allows Megaworld customers to use their mobile phones as wallets and brings Megaworlds services to more than 90% of the Brazilian population.
Megaworld’s growth in Brazil and the Latin American region has been phenomenal. Since 2005, Megaworld has experienced a 100% year on year growth in registered subscribers. Megaworld’s total client base in Brazil is almost 5 million registered subscribers with 13 million active in Latin America. Popular services include Megaupload, a leading player in cloud storage, as well as Megavideo, a video streaming site. Recent additions to the Megaworld portfolio include Megabox, a cloud-based music hosting and streaming service; Megapix, an online marketplace for stock photography and hosting of pictures; Megalive, an innovative broadcasting service that anyone can use.
Source: PRWeb
Jack Dorsey’s Square Mobile Payments Company Raises $27.5 Million in New Funding
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments startup, called Square, is in the process of raising a new round of funding at a valuation of more than $200 million, according to TechCrunch. The online technology blog cites Square’s general manager Keith Rabois as indicating that Square raised $27.5 million in new funding, with Sequoia Capital leading the round.
TechCrunch says they’ve heard that sources familiar with the matter say Square’s valuation in the round was approximately $240 million.
via TechCrunch
How to Ensure Secure Smartphone Mobile Payments
Whether you’re a consumer, developer or investor delving into mobile payments technologies for personal or professional use, There are a number of important factors to consider when evaluating mobile payment technologies in the coming year.
Here’s your cheat sheet for owning your mobile transaction financial health. Ensure that your credit card information is:
- Only sent to the venue’s POS system, rather than passing through third party services
- Only stored on your phone, where it’s safest, and not in the cloud
- Always encrypted when it is sent to the POS system, where the transaction is taking place
Read the full article, via CNN.
You must be logged in to post a comment.