NFC chip maker Inside Secure said it’s shipped 10 million NFC solutions so far this year to a number of manufacturers who are building contactless support into a variety of devices. That far off dream of NFC is finally becoming a reality. Read more »
Facebook isn’t a true PayPal competitor, but it’s taking some steps toward becoming an online payments provider outside of its Facebook properties. The social giant has begun testing the use of Facebook Credits on Uno Boost and Collapse! Blast, both available on gaming portal GameHouse. Read more »
Pageonce was one of the first iPhone apps and has built a following of more than 5 million users as a mobile financial service letting people track their bills from their smartphone. But the service has been missing one big thing until today: mobile bill pay. Read more »
While NFC is often thought of in the context of payments, increasingly mobile marketing, along with consumer loyalty, will be critical in helping to drive the growth and adoption of NFC. That’s what will provide value to both consumers and merchants. Read more »
Aided by growth in its PayPal business and mobile commerce, EBay recorded a strong quarter with revenue up 32 percent and income up 14 percent. In the third quarter ending Sept. 31, eBay’s generated $3 billion in revenue while earnings hit $490.5 million. Read more »
EBay and PayPal formally unveiled their X.commerce platform, an ambitious attempt to bridge online and offline commerce and arm developers and merchants with a host of tools to help them facilitate sales. X.commerce turns eBay into broader technology provider to merchants and developers. Read more »
LevelUp, the daily deal play from location-based service SCVNGR, is making another go of it, this time with a credit-based structure that utilizes a new mobile payment system built by SCVNGR. The service is now expanding beyond Boston and Philadelphia to New York and San Francisco. Read more »
Square said today it’s up to $2 billion in annual payments processed and has activated 800,000 merchants for its payment system, up from half a million in May. And it’s made a key change in the way it process payments to appeal to larger merchants. Read more »
Former MIT researcher Nathan Eagle wanted to use outsourcing and mobile technology to lift people in Kenya and elsewhere out of poverty. But faced with the realities of the outsourcing business, he changed course, and now wants to bring marketing dollars to people in emerging economies. Read more »
No one ever said turnarounds were easy, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) — currently the world’s largest handset maker — is one big ship. Today the c… Read more at paidContent »
Isis, the near field communication (NFC) joint venture with Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile said it has lined up HTC, LG, Motorola Mobility, RIM, Samsung Mobile and Sony Ericsson, who will introduce NFC-enabled mobile devices that implement Isis’ NFC and technology standards. Read more »
It’s still too early to say when they Year of Mobile payments will happen. But the important lesson is that mobile payments can’t rely on payments alone to sell itself; it will take a lot of new valuable services to convince consumers and merchants. Read more »
Broadcom is making a big bet on mobile payments finally hitting its stride with its latest NFC chip. The silicon will be manufactured at 40 nanometers, which means it will be small, more energy efficient and that Broadcom will make a lot of them. Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
By 2015, the worldwide sales of NFC-equipped handsets will reach 263.6 million units, with the cumulative total at more than half a billion compatible devices. This report covers the current landscape for NFC, examines the technology’s different forms of deployment and forecasts its future. It also examines the various deployments of NFC technology — mobile payments, point of purchase, augmented reality — and the challenges businesses, carriers and handset makers face moving forward. Companies mentioned in this report include Google, TapIt, Amazon and NTT DoCoMo. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Card.io, a start-up that launched a mobile credit card scanning tool in June, is seeing a strong amount of developer support with 80 iOS apps using its tech to improve mobile payments and transactions. Now, the company is bringing the technology to Android. Read more »
Is Google Wallet ready to replace my cash, credit cards and wallet? Not really. Does it make me feel cool and futuristic? You bet! That’s the feeling I get after playing with Google Wallet ahead of the big public launch today. Read more »
The fact that we all have technology at our fingertips has caused a disintermediation within traditional commerce, and significant disruption for retailers big and small. Innovation is no longer an option. Rather, it is paramount to survival. Read more »
MasterCard showed off a handful of projects Thursday that highlighted how it can leverage mobile phones to encourage shopping using a variety of technologies, from QR codes and NFC to audio signals and also motion control. The technology could be out on the market in months. Read more »
PayPal, which has been a powerhouse in online payments but hasn’t really cracked the market for real-world payments of goods, is starting to show off how it can put all of its components and recent acquisitions together to form a broad tool for mobile payments. Read more »
Canadian carrier Rogers has filed to become a bank under Canada’s Federal Bank Act, which will allow it to pursue more mobile payments services and a “niche credit card opportunity” for consumers. Expect more carriers to go the same route as the mobile payment opportunity explodes. Read more »
This year, much of the promise of mobile payments seems like it is finally coming together. GigaOM chose 25 mobile payments companies who are exerting the most influence in the mobile payment space, showing where it is and where it’s going. Read more »
Near Field Communications with mobile devices is still far from being a mainstream technology, and there have been precious few examples of… Read more at paidContent »
Mobile payments start-up Boku has signed a deal with Telefonica, the huge mobile carrier with almost 300 million subscribers, who will use Boku to power its payment API for BlueVia, its global developer program. It comes a week after Boku secured deals with two French carriers. Read more »
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are reportedly poised to invest $100 million in their joint mobile payment venture called Isis, a near field communication-based contactless payment system that will do battle in the increasingly competitive mobile payments market that includes Google Wallet, Square and others. Read more »
Erply, a point of sale and inventory software provider from Estonia, is looking to jump into the ring with Square and Verifone by offering an iPad payment dongle that will process credit card swipes similar to Square but also handle NFC payments. Read more »
For companies trying to convince customers that mobile payments are a viable alternative to options like cash and credit cards, the iPhone could be key. A new mobile device study reveals that iPhone owners are the most open to the prospect of paying with their devices. Read more »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A survey of developers finds that the primary importance of selling additional copies of a single app is dropping while driving users back repeatedly and spending money within the apps they’ve already sold is gaining. It’s a natural outgrowth of an extremely crowded apps marketplace. Read more »
The way people have been talking about near field communication, digital wallets and carrier billing, you’d think consumers were ready to embrace mobile payments. But Consumer Reports said consumers may not be as excited about paying for goods with their phones, nor should they be. Read more »
American Express’ Serve digital wallet is on a roll lining up carrier partners. Verizon announced Monday that it will support Serve payments on many Verizon smartphones and tablets in the coming months, allowing people to pay for online and offline goods by entering their phone number. Read more »
Jumio, a secretive online-payments startup created by Jajah founder Daniel Mattes, is finally ready for its close-up. And it’s a fitting metaphor, because Jumio is enabling online credit card payments made by scanning a card with a computer webcam. Read more »
The FinTech Innovation Lab, an accelerator program for financial tech startups, graduated its first class on Friday. This first batch of companies is bringing some impressive ideas to bear on data, analytics and payments and showing there’s room for new approaches in the financial sector. Read more »
While tech darling Square gets all the press, mobile payments start-up Dwolla is enjoying its own impressive growth and just hit $1 million in daily transactions, putting it on a faster initial pace than Square. It’s showing the power of building a cash-based payment network. Read more »
Carriers are struggling to address the gap between mobile data usage and revenues even as their networks approach capacity. Here’s how they can innovate to better monetize in the era of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Carriers are struggling to address the gap between mobile data usage and revenues even as their networks approach capacity. But those willing to embrace new business models and innovative services still have a chance to thrive in the era of the superphone. Read more »
PayPal today unveiled a new peer-to-peer payment functionality that allows Android users to pay each other by tapping two near field communication (NFC)-enabled devices together. The feature shows how PayPal is gearing up for NFC as part of its larger push on mobile payments. Read more »
Mobile payments have taken off in the last few years and are now poised to grow from $240 billion this year to $670 billion worldwide in 2015, aided by growing near field communication transactions for physical goods, according to Juniper Research. Read more »
One thing is clear: Investors love Square, the payments company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter. The veteran venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is leading the $100 million investment in the company that is said to be valued at $1 billion. Read more »
ViVOtech, an end-to-end provider of near field communication hardware and software, has raised $24 million in a Series C round of funding. The funding highlights the growing momentum behind NFC, which is finally coming together as a rising mobile payment and communications platform. Read more »
