GigaOM » mobile payments

Square will challenge PayPal with its own peer-to-peer cash service

Kevin Fitchard — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:44:21 +0000

PayPal may be taking on Square on its home mobile payments turf, but Square figures two can play that game. It has its own peer-to-peer payments in the works that will let users to transfer cash to each other by simply hitting the send button on an email.

A splash page first spotted by TechCrunch on Square’s website shows a demo of the service, which for now is available only to invited users. The demo shows that a registered user only has to send an email to the payment recipient with the dollar amount of the transfer in the subject line and pay@square.com in the CC field to complete a transaction. According to the page, you can email money to any debit card. An accompanying FAQ reveals that all transactions will cost the sender 50 cents a pop, but the recipient pays nothing.

We reached out to Square to get more details on the mysterious service, but the company isn’t revealing any more details for now. “We’re excited to share Square Cash with our friends,” a Square spokesperson said via email. “We’ll continue to invite others to try it out in the coming weeks.”

Of course, Square is a bit late to the party given that PayPal has dominated this space for a decade, while other companies like Braintree’s Venmo have been filling whatever gaps PayPal left in mobile peer-to-peer payments. The major banks all have their own email transfer services, and just last week at I/O, Google announced its intention to dive head first into the same market by adding Google Wallet support to Gmail. Square might just be another peer-to-peer payments setup, but it’s building up a consumer following thanks to Square Wallet (and Starbucks, which will help it distinguish its cash service form others.

Speaking of Google, the search giant revealed a sunset date of Nov. 20 for Google Checkout, a service it’s been promising to shut down for two years. Google has long intended to fold Checkout’s on-screen instant payment technology into Wallet. Google finally announced that transition at I/O last week.

In a blog post, Google said it would continue to support U.S. merchants that have their own payment processing technology with its new Wallet Instant Buy system. For customers who don’t have their own payment processing, Google is working with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to get them up and running on new a new commerce platform.

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LevelUp partners with NCR to bring mobile payments to more restaurants

Kevin Fitchard — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:44 +0000

LevelUp has struck a deal with one of the largest makers of retail point-of-sale systems, NCR, helping the startup make further inroads into its most important market: restaurants.

The payments startup is now chummy with the top two POS terminal and software makers used by U.S. restaurants (the other is Micros), and has deals will several smaller suppliers. The startup still has a long way to go before all of the burger joints and bistros that use those systems adopt its payments solution, but it’s comfortable in the knowledge that half the restaurants in the country could easily adopt that solution.

LevelUp offers both its own mobile payments app and white label technology that retailers can integrate into their own apps. In both cases, the implementation is pretty simple: they generate QR codes linked to a customer’s credit card information, which they can then scan into a terminal at the restaurant to make a mobile payment.

That terminal could be as basic as the proprietor’s smartphone (several previously cash-only merchants have used LevelUp to start accepting credit card payments), requiring no additional hardware, or it could take the form of a dedicated terminal. LevelUp takes 2 percent off the top of any transaction, but it also uses its platform to track customer data for rewards and promotions, bridging the gap between a loyalty program and a payment processing service.

At the end of 2012, LevelUp’s apps had about 500,000 users and it was handling about $5 million in transactions each month. Even in the nascent mobile payments market that makes it relatively small, however – in 2012, Square’s annual processing rate was $10 billion. But LevelUp believes it can become the Android to the Square’s iOS by working with other players like NCR in transaction value chain.

That’s one of the main reasons is focusing on independent restaurants, LevelUp said. Most restaurants already have a fully functioning (and often expensive) POS system in place. Instead of requiring a business to implement a new system for mobile payments, LevelUp merely acts as an appendage to their existing ones.

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Struggling Google Wallet reportedly abandons the idea of plastic cards

Laura Hazard Owen — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:13:41 +0000

It’s been two years since Google launched its mobile payments platform, Google Wallet, but the initiative has been slow to take off. The company had reportedly planned to launch a plastic card that could be used at merchants who don’t accept tap-and-go NFC payments. On Friday, though, AllThingsD reported that Google has abandoned the idea.

AllThingsD said the change of plan was included in a memo that also announced the departure of Google Wallet head Osama Bedier. The report cited sources who said that “Google CEO Larry Page abruptly killed the card launch plan after he was displeased with a glitchy run-through last week. He had long been skeptical of a physical card solution, with several sources saying he felt it did not press forward innovation as payments startups like Square have done.”

Google Wallet has also been hampered by its lack of partnerships with mobile carriers and platforms. It is available through Sprint, Virgin Mobile and some other carriers on select Samsung and LG phones but is not supported by Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile, and does not work on the iPhone.

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Square hires ex-Googler to handle global expansion, partnerships

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:20:34 +0000

Francoise Brougher, the former chief small business salesperson for Google has joined Square, taking over the quickly growing mobile payment company’s Business Lead role.

What’s a business lead? We’re a bit confused by the term as well, but according to Square, Brougher will oversee Square’s “growth operations including revenue products, international expansion, customer support, and partnerships.” That’s a big plate.

Brougher was most recently Google’s VP of SMB Global Sales and Operations, where she managed the team in charge of acquiring, growing, and retaining small business advertisers. That experience should serve Brougher well as Square, since a good chunk of its mobile payments revenues comes from 3 million small business owners.

As for international expansion, Brougher has a lot of ground to cover. Outside of the U.S., Square so far has only launched in Canada.

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Ribbon announces in-stream Twitter payments so you can purchase while you tweet

Eliza Kern — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:00:47 +0000

Update at 2:42 PM: Twitter has shut down the in-stream purchasing that Ribbon debuted Wednesday morning, and Ribbon CEO Hany Rashwan provided us with further explanation. Our new story can be found here.

Ribbon is one of several payments startups drawing new attention that is focused on one thing: removing the irritating qualities that come with purchasing things online. We’ve written about Ribbon before, namely how the company wants to let people make purchases just by clicking a link. And on Wednesday, the company plans to announce an even simpler way to buy: through Twitter.

Users on Twitter who come across merchants selling items through Ribbon will be able to tap the tweet to expand and complete a purchase without ever leaving Twitter. Ribbon had previously optimized its links so that users could purchase items through both Twitter and Facebook, but recent updates to Twitter’s Cards technology will extend this capability even further.

The idea? “Let’s just keep the buyer where they already are,” CEO and co-founder Hany Rashwan told me. “It’s a one-page check-out.”

In a demonstration, Rashwan showed me how to tap a tweet with a Ribbon link embedded, enter my credit card information, and hit purchase, all without leaving the expanded tweet. He said they’re working on improving the service so that once users make a purchase on Ribbon through Twitter, they won’t have to enter their credit card information a second time.

“We’re utilizing a part of the new cards technology,” noting that the company has also been supporting in-stream purchases on Facebook for a few months, and that the company has “tens of thousands” of merchants selling, although he would not disclose specific numbers.

As we wrote previously, Angelpad alum Ribbon has built its own payment system that lets it avoid fees and sets it apart from competitors, many of which use companies like PayPal or Stripe for credit card processing. The company is also updating its fees for merchants selling through Ribbon — it will now charge 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction, rather than the previous 5 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.

As we watch apps like Ribbon start to incorporate payments into Twitter’s stream, it’s easy to see why Twitter would want to expand the different types of Cards technology it offers, and how the company might start to allow transactions like Ribbon payments to happen on the site — potentially benefiting both Twitter and the payments companies.

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eBay’s PayPal and Magento join hands to offer a mobile payment service

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:01 +0000

When eBay bought Magento in 2011 it gained an e-commerce platform that merchants could use to create custom online stores, but eBay has largely kept Magento separate from its most famous e-commerce acquisition, PayPal. That’s now changing, though, as the two are announcing a partnership to integrate PayPal’s m-commerce and mobile payments technology with Magento’s service.

In an upcoming blog post Wednesday, PayPal CTO James Barrese said his company is creating two new extensions for Magento’s 150,000 merchants. The first, called In-Aisle Selling, hooks PayPal’s point-of-sale mobile payments service Here directly to a merchant’s store. Here lets a salesman to take a credit or debit card payment anywhere in the store with PayPal’s triangular magnetic reader, while Magento’s ordering and inventory system pulls down all purchase and customer details.

The second extension is called Order Ahead, which lets merchants set up shop in PayPal’s mobile app. In January, PayPal launched a pilot project with one of its key mobile payments customers, Jamba Juice. Customers could access Jamba Juice’s menu from the app, place an order while waiting in line or before they arrived — even make special substitution requests — and of course pay for their drink.

Barrese said the pilot was a success and now it’s expanding Order Ahead, starting with Magento merchants. Stores can use specialized templates to create their menus or catalogs and synchronize their opening hours and locations with PayPal’s ordering system. Merchants can then manage the pre-orders through a simple console available in the extension or directly integrate Order Ahead into their existing point-of-sale systems using Magento’s APIs. Customers can pick up their orders either by presenting their names, order numbers or the QR code on their e-receipts.

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Braintree opens up Venmo in-app payments to all iOS developers

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:00:53 +0000

When Braintree bought Venmo for $26.2 million in August what it got was a peer-to-peer payments provider that replicated the ease of a PayPal money transfer within its mobile apps. But two months ago, Braintree started tweaking Venmo’s technology as a payment identity tool on iOS, called Venmo Touch.

A beta project with three of its customers — TaskRabbit, HotelTonight and Wrapp – Venmo Touch allowed you to transfer credit card info from iPhone app to iPhone app, preventing customers from having to re-enter their credit card info every time they did business with a new brand or downloaded a new app. Instead, a customer could just hit the Venmo payment button and enter his or her credit card security code.

Now Braintree is taking Venmo Touch out of beta and offering it to all of its customers (though still only in iOS), and it’s using it as recruitment tool to get new ones. Traditionally Braintree has been the payments processor for e-commerce startups like Airbnb, Uber and Rovio, but now it wants to move into brick-and-mortar retail – or at least power the m-commerce transactions for traditional brick-and-mortar brands. Through a new partnership with Branding Brand — which builds mobile apps for the likes of American Eagle Outfitters, Costco and Crate & Barrel – it hopes to embed Venmo Touch in some pretty high-volume retail apps.

Chicago-based Braintree is already starting to see a big uptick in mobile transactions: $2 billion of its $8 billion in annual transactions are now coming from mobile apps and mobile websites.

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Bill Ford (yes, that Ford) invests in public transit, backing mobile ticketing firm Masabi

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:51:41 +0000

Given Detroit’s worship of the automobile, you wouldn’t think public transit would be high on its priority list, but on Wednesday transit ticketing startup Masabi revealed that one of the automotive industry’s most recognized names, Bill Ford, has taken a strategic and monetary interest in the company.

Bill Ford is, of course, the great-grandson of Henry Ford, and the executive chairman of the company that bears his name. He also co-founded a venture capital firm called Fontinalis Partners that focuses on next-generation mobile technologies. Fontinalis is leading a $2.8 million investment round in Masabi with participation from London’s MMC Ventures and existing backer m8 Capital. The company has already gone through several funding rounds, raising $2 million in 2010 and $4 million in 2011. m8 led both rounds.

London-based Masabi said that the strategic investment is aimed at promoting its mobile ticketing technology to U.S. transit agencies, building off of its success in the U.K. (it has 13 transit contracts across the pond), and its recent deployment with Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. To date, the company claims it has processed $50 million in ticket sales worldwide and $3 million alone from the MBTA since its system went live in November.

Masabi’s key product is called JustRide, a cloud-based end-to-end ticketing platform that allows riders to purchase, manage and store transit tickets and passes in their mobile phones. Users can buy tickets from an app in their smartphones rather than wait in ticket lines. For train systems with conductors, the tickets show up as animated watermarks easily identified by ticket takers. For automated ticket systems, the app will display a QR code that will get you through the turnstile. Masabi is also upgrading its software to support near-field communications (NFC) in the future.

Boston, for instance, still utilizes smart card ticketing – which also can be linked to JustRide platform – but the gradual move of its smartphone-toting ridership to the cloud-based ticketing service saves it millions of dollars in ticketing machine and backend infrastructure.

Though smartphone-initiated mobile payments haven’t exactly taken off in the U.S., transit ticketing is starting to become a key component of the digital wallet. The carriers’ mobile wallet Isis may still be limited to two cities, but it’s become popular as a mobile pass for Salt Lake City’s public transit system. Amtrak has started accepting digital tickets on the iPhone, and all of the major airlines now have boarding pass features in their apps.

As for Ford’s interest in public transit technologies, the chairman appears to be throwing his money in the same direction as his rhetoric. Ford has spoken several times about how, at the current rate of growth, the number of cars on the world’s highways would soon lead to massive congestion problems. His proposed answer is coordination between public transit and intelligent traffic management systems to better control of the flow of billions of people as they go about their daily lives.

Fontinalis has invested in many startups designed to make cars smarter such as Streetline, Life360 and Parkmobile, but it’s also invested in companies like Masabi and Wheelz, which go against Ford’s vested interest in individual car ownership.

Bill Ford image courtesy jurvetson via Compfight cc

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PayPal revamps developer program with new iOS SDK, retooled APIs

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:18:01 +0000

PayPal readily admits it hasn’t been the most developer-friendly company, but the online payments giant claims it is now ready to start actively courting the developer with a bevy of new tools it is launching at SXSWi.

First off, it’s launching a new iOS software developer’s kit (SDK), which allows app makers to code PayPal’s payment processing tools directly into their apps, instead of opening up a PayPal authorization and payments page. PayPal devs can also embed credit card scanning software from Card.io, which PayPal bought last summer. While it’s starting with iOS, PayPal said it would expand to other mobile platforms “soon.”

For quick integration, PayPal has developed Javascript buttons that can be embedded into a desktop or mobile website by adding five lines of codes. The payment feature can also be programmed into a QR code, allowing retailers to trigger transactions from outside of the device. Finally, PayPal is also retooling its application programming interfaces (APIs) around more modern and open frameworks such as REST, OAuth and JSON.

Previously, PayPal’s development platform ran over parent company eBay’s X.commerce, but PayPal is taking its developer efforts independent, launching a new development website that houses its sandbox, tools, documentation and other resources in a single location.

“This is just the beginning,” PayPal CTO James Barrese wrote on the company’s blog. “We will be releasing new APIs and capabilities throughout 2013, while continuing to support our existing developer tools through this evolution. We will continue to listen to the developer community and rapidly respond to their feedback.”

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Meet OneAPI, the technology that could make carriers relevant in mobile apps

Kevin Fitchard — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:49:10 +0000

Carriers have devised a new way to insert themselves into the mobile apps value chain. They want to become the identity managers for mobile services that require user registration or authentication. Just as many apps today allow you to log in using your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter credentials, carriers are hoping customers will start registering for services with their phone numbers.

To accomplish this the GSM Association launched a new initiative called the OneAPI Exchange at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The idea is to create an application programming interface (API) that any mobile app developer can use to authenticate new users against a carrier’s subscriber identity data. So far AT&T, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Vodafone have all signed on to the program, and together they represent a healthy chunk of the world’s mobile subscribers.

At first glance, the initiative seems like a nifty idea. If there is one thing every mobile subscriber in the world has it’s a phone number, making it ideal as a universal credential. But operators are also hoping to be more than just a username replacement. In a demo at Mobile World Congress, the GSMA showed off a bike rental app, in which carrier data was used not only to identify the user, but verify location and charge the rental to the customer’s mobile bill.

Obviously carriers are looking to make themselves relevant once again in the applications market and take a cut from any mobile transaction. This time they actually stand a chance of succeeding. Unlike previous API initiatives, the GSMA has actually figured out a way to make OneAPI near universal. Instead of tapping into separate APIs and crafting separate business agreements with every operator, developers just have to build to one API and strike one carrier deal, but the identity feature will work across all carriers’ networks.

The development house that built the OneAPI Exchange, Apigee, wasn’t able to eliminate the widespread fragmentation among carriers’ API platforms, but it rather ingeniously found a way around it. Apigee’s head of marketing, Dave Jordan, explained that the exchange acts as universal bridge between the operators’ disparate network interfaces.

A developer just picks a single operator to deal with and then builds to that operator’s API, Jordan said. If the app is downloaded on a different operator’s network the exchange will automatically map that carrier’s API onto the app, he said. For instance, if a developer were to pick AT&T’s API, any Orange or Telefónica customer could log in to the app using his carrier’s credentials, but AT&T would federate all of the transactions across those networks.

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