Square vs. NFC: Who is solving the real pain point in payments? Paying for stuff is considered an important part of the economy, one of those activities that civilization has been refining for thousands of years.
Yet it's still a big hassle. The major problem, of course, is cash. Paper money is a pain to acquire and carry—you can only find it at specialized locations, many of which charge you outrageous fees. It isn't safe; if you lose cash or it gets stolen, that's that. Cash leaves no record, which is good for thieves and tax cheats, but inconvenient for the rest of us. Farhad Manjoo is a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal and the author of True Enough. Follow It makes sense, then, that few Americans want to use cash anymore. I'd rejoice if someone found a way around this. I have a secret for you: The perfect payment system already exists. I can't think of any reason why waving my phone would be a better way to check out than swiping my credit or debit card. Paypal Is About To Get A Bruising From Facebook And Square. Editor’s note: Guest author Ohad Samet is an expert in managing fraud and other risks in payments systems.
He is a cofounder of Signifyd, and years ago was a senior manager at PayPal and blogs at As Risky As It Gets and Tweets at @ohadsamet. 2011 is going to be a big year for payments, with more startups and mature companies getting funded in the space than almost ever before. It’s important to make the distinction between the headline chasers, the slow moving giants struggling for a piece of the pie and the companies that have a chance at real disruption.
For my money Facebook and Square are both very interesting companies to follow in this space. In my last post on TechCrunch I discussed Google and Apple and their efforts around payments, and explained why I don’t yet think they are serious players for the whole payments pie. Paypal’s Weaknesses First and foremost, Paypal’s service has matured over the last ten years. Third, Paypal is very much U.S. Facebook’s Social Advantage. 75% UK consumers wrote cheques in 2010. Mobile Banking: A Growing and Lucrative Market. Shoppers Skip Checkout Lines, Pay From Mobile Phones. Sitges trial results: Consumers pay more often and spend more with NFC phones than with cards. By Sarah Clark • nfcworld.com • Published January 7th, 2011 • Last updated 1 April 2011, 17:16 Telefónica, la Caixa and Visa’s NFC payments trial in the Spanish resort of Sitges has seen significant increases in both transaction frequencies and purchase values but, the partners say, a mass deployment of NFC services is still three to five years away.
SITGES TRIAL: 85% of users were happy with the security of NFC payments The six month trial of NFC mobile payments which has been taking place in the Spanish resort town of Sitges since the end of May 2010 is now complete and the results of a survey of participants in the trial have now been released. For the trial, more than 1,500 customers of both mobile network operator Telefónica and La Caixa bank were equipped with Samsung S5230 NFC phones loaded with la Caixa Visa cards and 500 merchants in the town were equipped with contactless POS devices capable of handling NFC payments. Five payment trends to watch in 2011. 2010 dramatically changed how we think about how people and businesses exchange money.
We saw ecommerce continue to grow and we saw emerging channels take flight with consumers and merchants of all sizes. As great as last year was for innovation in payments, we’re just getting warmed up. This year we should expect to see some incredible innovations that will change how we pay and get paid, and on a broader scale, change how we view physical currency (spoiler: This will be the beginning of the end for cash). Below are some of my thoughts on how payments will evolve in the next year. I’d love to get your opinion in the comments section.
Mobile, mobile, mobile Wallet in the cloud. At PayPal, we couldn’t agree more with this statement, and our numbers back it up. T-commerce From our point of view, part of that interactivity will be the ability to conduct a wide variety of transactions through a television. ‘Appification’ Social Shopping. The Future of Payments - Mobile and NFC ( - Telecommunication ) You gotta love blogs - I don't usually write much about payments, but I have had so many inquiries on the topic lately, that it made sense to share my thoughts with a broader audience.
Mobile Payments A growing number of small businesses are benefiting from smartphone based mobile payments capabilities. A growing number of companies including Square, Swipe It, Innerfence, Intuit and VeriFone have introduced mobile payments capabilities targeting small to mid-sized businesses. Not only do these companies enable physical store fronts to streamline and modernize how they ask customers to pay for goods, but it also extends capabilities to self-employed service providers, like plumbers and carpenters and to part-time retailers like flea market sellers.