Mobile Payment Magazine

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.

China NFC Payment Transaction Values to Top $8 Billion by 2014, Says Report

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China could see more than $8 billion in mobile payments by 2014, according to ABI Research forecasts.

The Near Field Communication (NFC) market is moving forward on an uneven front. Google is aggressively supporting the technology through the latest generation of Android handsets from its partners such as Samsung. Nokia is introducing NFC-capable handsets, but the C7 and N9 only support non-secure applications and not contactless payment.

In China, however, device manufacturers and operators are keen to move ahead with contactless mobile payment. It will be interesting to see how ZTE, as a local OEM, implements its announced range of NFC smartphones and handsets.

Jake Saunders, VP for forecasting at ABI Research notes, “China is a big mobile payments market to play for. There were more than 868 million cellular subscribers as of the end of March 2011.”

China’s mobile payments industry is burgeoning, attracting many participants wishing to grab first-mover advantage and vie for a bigger slice of the pie. ABI Research estimates that NFC payment transaction values in China could surpass $8 billion by 2014. Financial institutions (China UnionPay), third party mobile payment service providers, and Mobile Network Operators (China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom) are all jostling for position. According to Saunders, “ABI Research believes the mobile payment market in China will largely adopt an MNO-led business model.”

The Chinese government has expressed a preference for an NFC device solution utilizing the 13.56 MHz frequency band. To break the classic chicken-and-egg cycle, there are bridging solutions intended to stimulate the contactless payment market. The principal one is contactless (NFC) SIM cards. WatchData’s SIMpass solution has attracted strong interest from all three operators.

As a result, more NFC handset add–ons are shipped than NFC-enabled mobile handsets: 2.5 million SIMpass add-ons and 50,000 SD add-ons, versus 45,000 handsets in 2010.

ABI Research’s “Mobile Payments in China” study, produced by the firm’s Singapore division, provides an overview of the contactless mobile payments ecosystem in China. It also explores the near-term regulatory directives and the payment technology competition among the key players, and points out the potential winners and losers.

Mobile Payments in China Report Overview

China is the world’s largest single mobile market. Indeed, China’s mobile payments industry is a burgeoning market. It is attracting a number of participants in an attempt to assume first mover advantage. While the market potential is very real, there is uncertainty over which proximity payment technology will ultimately secure dominance – RF SIM on the 2.4 GHz band versus NFC on the 13.56 MHz band. This survey attempts to provide an overview of the contactless mobile payments ecosystem in China. It also explores the near-term regulatory directives and the payment technology competition amongst the key players and points out the likely winners. The race to lead in China primarily exists among the MNOs, banking institutions and the third party mobile payment service providers. Each has its own competitive advantage and offering to consumers.

In this Report:

  • What are the opportunities for contactless payment in the Chinese market?
  • What standard does the government support?
  • How will NFC be implemented?
  • What is SIMpass?
  • Who are the key players in the Chinese mobile payment market?
  • What are the main bottlenecks?
  • How will the market evolve?

Target Audience:

  • smart card vendors
  • mobile operators
  • government planning departments
  • investment banks

Source: ABI Research

Payment Methods for Chinese Social Networking Service (SNS) Games Exported to Southeast Asian Market

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As Chinese game developers rush to explore the overseas market, game operation as well as in-game payment systems have become a hot topic for game developers.

Chinese game developers are running their games in the overseas markets in a number of ways: First, through massive global social networks, such as Facebook;  other developers prefer to run the games on their own platforms, like Elex-tech; and still others distribute their games via local operators. Game developers who choose the last option are free from worrying about game operating and recharging systems as the agent takes care of that; but if they choose the first option, especially publishing games on Facebook, they need to operate the game on their own and choose their own payment methods.

Regardless of the new Facebook payment policies,  there are three payment methods on Facebook:

  • Facebook credit and PayPal that binds with users’ debit or credit cards;
  • Local game recharging cards;
  • Mobile billing

Facebook credit and PayPal is popular in European countries but rarely in Southeast Asia, as local users are not accusto med to using credit cards.

Compared with PayPal, the use of game recharging cards is more widespread. Game recharging cards such as MOL are popular in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, but rarely in Southeast Asia.

As for mobile billing, it is not restricted by sales outlets and it fits the users’ need of paying anytime and anywhere. People choose mobile billing mostly because of its lower risks and ease of use, so it is an important payment method. For some small game developers, it would be difficult for them to go directly to the operators, so a preferrable solution may be to select a mobile billing solution provider that can supply them with customized service, such as provided by B.Shark, Boku and Zong.

In conclusion, not one of the payment solutions is perfect; they are complementary with each other, and Social Networking Service (SNS) game developers should optimize their payment system in order to maximum their income.

Source: B.Shark

B.Shark Mobile Payment API Drives Up the China Phone Market

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Just one month after launching the B.Shark mobile payment API, hundreds of mobile application developers and manufacturers have started the integration work, and shipped out the mobiles and have started generating income. Particularly the South East Asian market is showing a sharp increase at the beginning of July.

Most of the mobile manufactures integrated with B.Shark’s mobile payment API sell their mobiles to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam in South-east Asia, to Brazil and Chile in South America, and to Nigeria and Ghana in Africa.

“It was very difficult for the mobile manufacturers to make any revenue on the pre-load mobile content before, because we do not have a connection with the operators and other service providers’ solutions cannot work on our mobile OS,” said a manager from the value added service department from one of the biggest manufacturers of China phones.
”Mobile users can now enjoy better and constant updated mobile content through GPRS networks, and with the B.Shark API, we can collect the revenue from the pre-loaded content, which would increase brand loyalty and the competitiveness of the manufacturers. With this kind of fierce competition in the industry, this extra income means a lot to us,” he added

The up-to-date data shows that hundreds of mobile manufactures have downloaded the B.Shark mobile payment API. With this API, they will be able to explore more areas in the overseas mobile market, and push the China phone market forward.

Source: B.Shark

Chinese Mobile Game Developers Discuss Expansion to Overseas Markets

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Recently the SPforum Blog, the largest microblog dedicated to the Mobile Internet industry in China, held a forum with topics on how Chinese game developers can expand to overseas markets. The discussion was lively, and more than 100 top Chinese game developers participated.

Some highlights from the forum include:

  • Participants agreed that it is high time for the Chinese game developers to go global. As more opportunities have become available. Many agreed that Chinese developers should be more open and look beyond China to overseas markets. “We will be changed if we cannot change ourselves first,” said Zhishang Wang, CEO of SPforum Microblog.
  • Chinese developers should develop multi-language games for smart phones while developing single-language games for feature phones (non-smart phones). “It is better to develop games in several language versions at the same time since the smart phone AppStore is more often on a global scale,” said Gang Wu, CEO of WiSTONE Entertainment, a famous mobile game developer in China.
  • Games for smart phones can be distributed to Europe, Asia, and Latin America, while games for feature phones should be distributed to countries where Chinese feature phones are exported mostly, such as Vietnam, Thailand, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, etc.
  • Games for Android can be distributed through third party Android Market. With China, for example, EOE and 1Mobile would be the most popular. These markets already have a large number of users in overseas markets. Games for feature phones can be distributed through the Sky-Mobi Platform, which is the largest Chinese AppStore in feature phones covering users in over 80 countries.
  • Game developers should adopt several payment solutions for its games and users will choose the best solution by themselves. The suggested payment solutions are Boku, Zong, Paypal, B.Shark, etc. B.Shark is the leading mobile payment solution provider in China that have premium short codes in 116 countries, covering 300+ operators, and B.Shark can offer faster after-sales service for Chinese game developers comparing with foreign payment solution providers.

“Chinese game developers should take advantage of Chinese resources when expanding to overseas market, such as quantity of Phone producers in China and those Chinese AppStore solution providers who focus on overseas markets,” said Zhongyuan Zhang, COO of B.Shark.

Source: B.Shark

 

China Telecom Offers 3G Mobile Payments in Bejing

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China Telecom’s Beijing branch has published a report, stating that it will open a mobile phone payment function for its eSurfing 3G users.With this new function, users can inquiry about their bank card balances, pay mobile phone fees, pay credit card bills, and transfer money between bank cards with their mobile phones. They can go to China Telecom Beijing’s appointed business halls to open this service.

Read more, via ChinaTechNews.com.

Chinese Mobile Payment Company B.Shark Launches Payment API for Tablets

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With more than 300 partners registered in the first week after B.Shark launched its mobile payment API, B.Shark continued to introduce the payment API for tablets. With the B.Shark’s BSpay API, tablet manufacturers will be able to charge consumers from other countries, which would be a new option to increase tablet manufacturer revenue.

The latest IDC report shows that the worldwide shipment of tablets has reached 18 million in 2010. Market research Company IMS expects a growth of 242% and 58 million shipments for tablets in 2011. All of this shows the rapid increase of popularity for tablets– and the Android driven tablets are  taking up the market share dramatically. Analyst Toni Sacconaghi has predicted that the shipment of tablets worldwide will reach 215 million units by 2015. He believes that 15% of the tablet sales are derived from consumers from the PC market; consequently, between 2010 and 2015 the growth rate of PC sales should decline by 2%. [Read more…]

JCB and China UnionPay Announce Further Alliance

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JCB, the only global payment brand based in Japan, and China UnionPay (UnionPay), China’s bankcard association, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on June 10, 2011 to expand their current strategic relationship and to develop potential new areas of cooperation.

The new alliance envisioned by the MOU will emphasize further strategic alliance in various fields and regions building win-win relationship in the long-term, with the aim of providing new value and products to enhance convenience for customers.

The partnership between JCB and UnionPay dates back to 2003, when JCB and UnionPay signed a merchant acquiring agreement which enabled JCB card acceptance in China. In 2006, JCB started facilitating UnionPay card acceptance on JCB’s ATM network in Japan, followed by the launch of merchant acquiring operations in Japan last year aiming to increase the level of convenience for UnionPay cardholders.

UnionPay’s international expansion is driven by the remarkable economic growth of China, where GDP in 2010 increased 10.3% over the previous year and the country became the second largest economy in the world, while JCB is now actively focusing its global strategy on and beyond Asia. This convergence in the strategy of the two brands strategy led to the new agreement, a milestone in both brands’ global expansion.

JCB and UnionPay aim to further expand and enhance card payment business including Asia that has strong potential growth with this new alliance.

Source: ACN Newswire

Sing Lee Software Mobile Payment Business Grows to 140,000

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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…]