PayPal’s growth is outstripping parent company eBay’s, due in part to the rapidly expanding mobile payment business. The company expects about $700 million in mobile transactions this year, though the amount still represents only about 1% of PayPal’s total transaction volume. Currently PayPal is working several angles of mobile payment, including a partnership with Bling Nation.
via NYTimes.com.
A recent report from Aite Group forecasts that U.S. mobile bill payments will reach more than $200 billion in 2015.
Aite Group interviewed more than 60 companies in the Fall of 2010 and produced a 65 page report that defines and segments the mobile payment industry, and includes an analysis of the competitive and market trends.
Each one of the multiple categories of mobile payments defined in the report will experience double-digit growth, with mobile payments accounting for US$214 billion in gross dollar volume by 2015, up from US$16 billion in 2010–a 68% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2010 and 2015.
The report references the following companies: Allstate, Amazon, American Express, Apple, AT&T, Bango, Bank of America, Barclays, Bill2Mobile, BlackBerry, Bling Nation, BOKU, Brink’s, C-Sam, Cashedge, Cellfire, Chase, Chase Paymentech, Cimbal, ClairMail, coupons.com, Coupons Sherpa, Visa’s Cybersource, Device Fidelity, Diebold, Discover, Eagle Eye Solutions, eBay, Euronet, Facebook, First Data, FIS, Fiserv, Foursquare, Gemalto, Global Payments, Google, Gowalla, Green Dot, Groupon, Harland Financial Services, Heartland Payment Systems, Hipcricket, iLoop Mobile, Inside Contactless, Intuit, Jack Henry/iPay Technologies, Kubra, MasterCard, mFoundry, Mobile Coupons, Mocapay, MoneyGram, Monitise Group, mopay, MyWebGrocer, NCR, NetSpend, Nokia, Oberthur Technologies, Obopay, OfferIQ, Online Resources, PayPal, Plastyc, Pyxis Mobile, Research-in-Motion (RIM), Roam Data (Ingenico), Roamware, Rocketbuxx, SK C&C USA, Square, Starbucks, Sybase, T-Mobile, Tetherball, 3i Infotech, Tier Technologies, TransferTo, TSYS, Twitter, U.S. Bank, VeriFone, Verizon, Vesta, Visa, ViVOtech, Waspit, Way Systems, Western Union, Wincor Nixdorf, WirelessLoyalty, Xipwire, Yelp, and Zong.
More information: Aite Group Mobile Payment Report.
Source: Aite Group
On the heels of the news of PayPal’s vulnerable iPhone application, The Wall Street Journal broke news of additional vulnerabilities in other major financial institutions’ smart phone applications. These security flaws were uncovered by computer and mobile forensics firm, viaForensics, who tested smart phone applications from Bank Of America, Chase, TD Ameritrade, USAA, Wells Fargo and Vanguard, in addition to PayPal.
viaForensics has been communicating and coordinating with the financial institutions to address the flaws. Most of the institutions were able to quickly resolve the issues and release new versions of their applications.
According to American Banker 25% of the mobile banking programs analyzed received a poor rating: ” In most cases, these failures occurred because testers were able to recover a user password or other sensitive user data from a user’s mobile device. In some cases, the apps cached a security PIN or a user name and password. In other instances testers were able to recover payment history, partial credit card numbers and other transaction-related data. About a third (31%) of mobile banking apps received a “Warn” grade because a user name or app data was present, but not considered a significant risk to the user. The remaining 44% of mobile banking apps passed the test.”
viaForensics has retested the applications and released the results through appWatchdog, a free service which tests publicly available mobile applications for insecure transmissions or storage of sensitive user data. The service measures such factors as how securely the app handles user names and passwords. If not handled properly, security lapses can place the user at risk for data and financial theft. A deeper audit is offered through appSecure, which provides sophisticated security testing and recommendations for securing the app.
Sources: viaForensics, American Banker
The consumer uses web pages displayed or additional applications downloaded and installed on the mobile phone to make a payment. It uses WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) as underlying technology and thus inherits all the advantages and disadvantages of WAP. However, using a familiar web payment model gives a number of proven benefits:
However, unless the mobile account is directly charged through a mobile network operator, the use of a credit/debit card or pre-registration at online payment solution such as PayPal is still required just as in a desktop environment.
Mobile web payment methods are now being mandated by a number of mobile network operators.
A number of different actual payment mechanisms can be used behind a consistent set of web pages.
A direct connection to the operator billing platform requires integration with the operator, but provides a number of benefits:
It has however a drawback, the payout rate will be much lower than with other payment providers. Examples from a popular provider :
A simple mobile web payment system can also include a credit card payment flow allowing a consumer to enter their card details to make purchases. This process is familiar but any entry of details on a mobile phone is known to reduce the success rate (conversion) of payments.
In addition, if the payment vendor can automatically and securely identify customers then card details can be recalled for future purchases turning credit card payments into simple single click-to-buy giving higher conversion rates for additional purchases.
Online companies like PayPal, Amazon Payments, mHITs and Google Checkout also have mobile options. Here is the process :
First Payment
Subsequent payments :
Requesting a PIN is known to lower the success rate (conversion) for payments. These systems can be integrated with directly or can be combined with operator and credit card payments through a unified mobile web payment platform.
Source: Wikipedia