The future of digital payments: Square Card Case, Google Wallet, and more. The idea of a mobile wallet has been touted as the next big thing for years now, and despite pioneering trials from the likes of Nokia (that, among other things, enabled users to pay for vending machine items via text messages), the technology hasn’t changed the lives of many consumers. That may be changing, as companies like Visa and MasterCard start to put their muscle behind mobile payment technologies, and firms like Google begin offering tools like the NFC-enabled Google Wallet. Now the disruptive mobile payment startup Square is upping its game, announcing a new version of its Card Case mobile payment solution. How does Card Case work, and how does it compare to other mobile payment systems? Inside Square’s Card Case Square’s Card Case enables users to pay for purchases at merchants and businesses they frequent regularly — relying on clerks, waitstaff, and business managers to recognize their regular patrons.
How Card Case stacks up to Google Wallet The Apple Store App. PayPal & eBay Get Friendly With Facebook. Kabbage analyzes credit scores of online retailers. Are people who build criminal empires in the online game "Mafia Wars" a better credit risk than those who milk cows and plant crops in "FarmVille"? An Atlanta startup called Kabbage aims to find out. The company advances money to online merchants who sell goods such as clothing, model trains or handicrafts on eBay, Amazon.com and Yahoo so they can buy inventory and expand their businesses. To assess creditworthiness, Kabbage's computers analyze data such as transaction history, user feedback ratings and, soon, game and social-media participation. Risk modeling "When I first saw (Kabbage's risk modeling), I thought, 'My God, somebody is going to pay a lot for that information,' " says Warren Stephens, chief executive officer of investment bank Stephens and an investor in the startup.
Small online merchants tend to carry a lot of debt and can be slow to repay, hurting their credit scores and scaring off traditional lenders. UPS among backers Access to PayPal Repeat customer. Barclaycard Freedom Teams Up With Vouchercloud | MoneyHighStreet.com. Published: 10 August 2011 By Peter Thompson Updated: 10 August 2011 Barclaycard Freedom rewards can now be accessed on the vouchercloud app and website meaning easy access to offers from participating retailers such as Shell, PizzaExpress and Goldsmiths. Vouchercloud helps you save money by delivering hundreds of pounds of discount vouchers via print, online or your mobile. It carries discounts from over 20,000 stores across the UK and the vouchercloud app has been voted the UK’s number 1 money saving app by numerous national newspapers and industry bloggers. Now Barclaycard Freedom customers will be able to use the app to more easily benefit from the rewards Freedom offers – being able to search for offers by location and distance.
Richard Wergan at Barclaycard comments: “Consumers are today using their mobile phones more than ever to search for offers and deals to help them save money.” “With most of us being ultra cost conscious at the moment taking advantage of special offers is a must.” Payment Processing Changes and How it Will Effect Small Businesses. It was not long ago that a small business had to make the choice whether or not to accept credit cards.
In recent years that decision has been made for business owners as competition and consumer-buying habits started forcing even the smallest shops to accept some form of card payments. As fewer people carry cash and technology continues to innovate, the future of payment processing may look very different in the near future. A Brief Description of the Current Payment Processing Landscape For the past few decades, merchant services has been an industry shrouded in secrecy and deception. It is riddled with difficult to understand contracts, hidden fees and often full access to business checking accounts to remove or add funds as they see fit. Talk to a few small business owners and you are bound to find someone who resents the credit card processing industry and has no problem telling you about their horror stories.
New Players in the Payment Processing Game. Learn About Interchange Fees. Tinypay.me Raises $1 Million, Moving HQ to San Francisco. E-commerce platform Tinypay.me, which emerged from 2010′s Le Web conference as a sort of Twitter for e-commerce, has just raised $1 million from Aksoy Internet Ventures. The money will be used, in part, to relocate company headquarters from the Netherlands to the heart of the action: San Francisco. Tinypay.me bills itself as the easiest way to sell stuff online, since all you have to do to start selling is fill out a single form. The entire process takes just 60 seconds, the company says. To use Tinypay.me, you fill out the form, notify your friends on Facebook and Twitter, and accept payments via PayPal. The service supports both physical and digital goods and generates a page that can be embedded into websites. No account is needed to use the service, as everything is handled through your e-mail.
Says co-founder and CEO Melvin Tercan, the team is moving to Silicon Valley because “our mission is to conquer the world and there’s no better place to start than here.” Could Google Buy Discover To Create An Ad Based Payments Network? | Payments Market. Originally posted on PaymentsLab In a big push for Andoid and mobile commerce, Google announced they are buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This is an interesting development as the mobile commerce landscape unfolds and consumer preferences gel with Android OS having an estimated 39% of the mobile market share.
(Here’s an interesting graph on the history of Android) Google has a strong ecosystem for Android, but no-one can argue Google Checkout has had its challenges as a result Google changed direction by focusing more broadly on Google Commerce. Checkout is still active and may soon become more relevant. Perhaps Google was taking the wrong approach with a traditional card-not-present service model. Follow me on this..... - Google tried to buy Groupon, Groupon says NO.
. - Google launches Google Wallet which will be supporting NFC and contactless payments. . - Google Chrome PC launched as a stand-alone PC running the browser-based Chrome OS. - Google launched Google TV.
AMEX & Link, Like, Love. Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts Through Facebook Credits. Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts to Developers for Credits Revenue Facebook announced this morning that developers signing up for Facebook Credits now have PayPal as a payout option, increasing the flexibility developers have for monetzing apps through Facebook Credits. This is of particular importance to developers in countries where PayPal is really the only trusted payout option for developers. Payout is the means by which a developer converts in-app currency exchanges to real money that the developer can then deposit into its bank accounts.
Facebook says that the PayPal option now doubles the number of countries where developers can begin integrating Facebook Credits to 22 countries total, including Turkey, India and Japan. Facebook Credits has been a slow road for certain social game developers in the last nine months between apparent reluctance and technical issues. The mandatory integration deadline for Facebook Credits within social games is July 1. Sponsored Post.
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