I Am Jonathan’s Starbucks Card: A Social Payment Experiment (With Free Coffee) Jonathan’s Starbucks card lives in Jonathan Stark’s wallet. You can download a copy of the card (shown here) and, when there is money on it, scan it at any Starbucks to buy coffee and, as far as anyone can tell, Jonathan doesn’t care. Crazy, you say? Sure, it’s crazy… like a fox. Jonathan Stark is a programmer and writer and has been experimenting with “social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones.” Similar to the old Italian tradition of Caffe Pagato, Jonathan wants you to use the cash on his card to buy your own coffee. He also wants you to tweet about your experience and, if you’re really cool, put a little money on the card.
He has written an API to access the current card balance and he has a Tweetstream that tweets out current numebrs. Want to help the cause? 1. You can grab your copy of the card here. Google To Announce Virtual Wallet Platform This Thursday [REPORT] Google is expected to announce a mobile payment platform that will let consumers wave their Android-based phones at the checkout counter to make payments, redeem coupons and earn loyalty points, according to two reports.
The new technology will interact with near-field communication-equipped cash registers, in effect turning the devices into virtual wallets, Bloomberg reports. Participating retailers include Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway, according to another report in The Wall Street Journal., which cites “people familiar with the matter.” It’s unclear whether the roll-out will be national or just in New York. Google reps could not be reached for comment. Google has been talking about adding NFC-enabled payments since at least November 2010, when then-CEO Eric Schmidt disclosed that Samsung’s Nexus S mobile device contained an NFC chip. Meanwhile, at least one major retailer, Starbucks, isn’t waiting for Apple or Google to institute a mobile payment system. Does Facebook hold the future of mobile payments in its hands? American Express launches digital payments platform. American Express has ceaselessly driven into our heads, “Don’t leave home without it” as the commercial message for its American Express card.
Now it’s launching its Serve digital payments platform, so it can tell us, “Don’t go online without it.” The move to give consumers new ways to spend, send and receive money online will help American Express go to war with PayPal and Visa, which bought PlaySpan for $190 million in February. And it suggests that the battle to control digital payments online is going to be a big one, since billions upon billions of dollars in transaction fees are at stake. The overall goal is to provide a digital alternative to cash.
“This provides us with an opportunity to deepen our relationships with consumers to fit their increasingly digital lifestyles,” said Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth at American Express, in a conference call on Monday morning. Over time, the company will add new features and functions to Serve. Paypal Debuts Mobile Express Checkout. Paypal announced a two-click mobile payment system called Mobile Express Checkout today at its developer conference in San Francisco. Mobile payment processes have long been the bane of would-be mobile commerce titans. The balance between security and ease of use has been difficult to achieve, but Paypal's beta partners for Mobile Checkout Express have seen great results from using the product so far.
Starbucks, one initial partner for Mobile Checkout Express, will use Paypal's newest mobile payment product to let customers quickly reload their Starbucks Cards from within the company's iPhone app. Mobile Checkout Express will allow users to opt into the service and stay logged in between various mobile apps. Paypal says the new product is also easy to use for existing merchants who already use Paypal Express Checkout on their web-based stores. Paypal has had a few notable successes on the mobile front this year.
PayPal exprects to process $2b in m-payments in 2011. According to the source, eBay's chief executive John Donahoe discussed during the Q1 2011 earnings call about how PayPal is expected to process over USD 2 billion in mobile payments by the end of 2011, nearly three times the USD 750 million processed in 2010. Recent financial results have revealed that PayPal, the online payments division of eBay, has witnessed a 16 percent year-over-year growth in the number of active registered accounts, reaching 97.7 million in Q1 2011. In recent and related news , eBay’s PayPal unit has acquired mobile payments startup FigCard, according to the PayPal blog. In a post signed by Peter Chu, senior director of PayPal Mobile, the company has announced that PayPal has acquired Fig Card and has appointed two new members to the PayPal Mobile team, namely Max Metral and Hasty Granbery, founders of FigCard.
Girl Scouts Accepting Cards for Cookies with GoPayment. Mobile First : Mobile Payments + DG. Merchants, are you tired of losing online sales because you only take payment by credit card? Mobile First, a provider of premium SMS text messaging services, just announced their Mobile Payment processing solution. Your online customers can now make purchases using their text messaging-enabled cell phones – a method that Mobile First claims has at least 8x the conversion factor, at least in the USA. Imagine a 65% conversion rate for phone-based payments compared to 7% for credit card payments, in the USA, and a potential 1.7B customers. (Consider that the number of Facebook users with a credit card is less than 20%.) The company is offering this text message-based payment service in the USA, Canada, UK plus other markets, for a total of 40 countries, with new markets being added monthly.
Mobile First says the process is simple for both merchants and customers. Merchants: Customers: Add an item to your shopping cart. Benefits for Customers: Incomplete documentation. WorldPay partners CellPoint Mobile on m-payments for retailers. WorldPay, one of the world's leading payment service providers for both online and Point of Sale transactions, has partnered with CellPoint Mobile, a leading provider of mobile infrastructure, retail and payment solutions, to offer retailers mobile payment services for remote transactions. The joint solution gives merchants across the globe instant capabilities to offer consumers mobile payment options using Worldpay's extensive payment processing capabilities. The new payment solution provides a secure, PCI DSS compliant, web-based program that enables 1-click remote mobile payments.
Figures show that retailers have already begun to adjust to the emergence of mobile shopping. According to a recent report by Juniper Research, the mobile retail market is predicted to see an annual growth of 24% over the next four years, reaching $12 billion in 2014, further fuelled by an industry shift in the production and shipping of smartphones over traditional cellular phones.