PayPal Uses NFC to Make Peer-to-Peer Payments Easier than Ever.
A Bubble in Mobile Payments? I’m sure you’ve seen it – there’s been so much “buzz” in the press over the last few weeks about mobile payments. Yet, in our partners’ meeting at Glenbrook earlier this week, I told my colleagues that if I knew of a way to short “mobile payments”, I’d be all over it. Follow along as I explain my thinking…and, you can decide whether you agree or disagree with me. Again, my focus in this conversation is on the U.S. market opportunity. I’m not addressing other aspects of “mobile payments” – such as bill to carrier, etc. I’m a skeptic about the opportunity for mobile payments in the U.S. at physical point-of-sale locations – at least for the next 24-36 months.
Why? Getting to a “tipping point” in terms of face-to-face mobile payments acceptance is a hard problem. Why is it such a hard problem? We have tens of millions of point-of-sale (POS) readers in this country – all of which support reading traditional magnetic stripe cards. But don’t mobile payments solve a consumer pain point? Maybe. Bump Closes $16M Round By Moving Beyond Sharing Contact Info. Bump Technologies, the company that makes it super simple to exchange information, photos and music with other users by bumping phones, has announced that it has closed a $16 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors in the round, which closed just before the first of the year, include Sequoia Capital (which led Bump's first round of funding in October 2009), Sherpalo (Ram Shriram) and SV Angel (Ron Conway).
Marc Andreessen will join Sequoia's Greg McAdoo as a Bump board member. This funding announcement caps off a banner year for Bump. We had a chance to talk to CEO and co-founder David Lieb and co-founder Jake Mintz about some of Bump's user stats, some of its newest features and where the company is headed next. When Bump [iTunes link] was first released for the iPhone in March 2009, the main purpose of the app was to make it simple to share contact information with another person simply by gesturing phones toward one another. Check out some of these stats:
Mobile Payments in 2011. ++ M-Payments Are Redefining Commerce [summary] The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter. Thanks to recent tech advances, investments by companies like Apple and Google, and the backing of traditional payment processors (as well as new startups), the mobile payments space is white hot. Consumers, particularly those in parts of Europe and Asia, have been making purchases using their cellphones for the better part of a decade. Traditional ecommerce solutions aside, however, mobile payments have yet to really go mainstream. Even if the disruption isn't happening overnight, mobile payment systems are still poised to help redefine the way business is done all over the world.
Mobile Payment Systems: A Primer Forrester Research separates systems into two broad categories: Systems that Process Payments. Near Field Communication: The Quick and Dirty Guide. Before it became a hot topic sometime early last year, few civilians had come across the term "near field communication" (NFC). Corporations, however, had been excited about the technology's potential since at least 2004 — when Nokia, Sony and Royal Philips Electronics founded the NFC Forum. Samsung, Motorola, Microsoft and more than 140 other organizations all joined the party shortly after.
NFC allows a device, usually a mobile phone, to collect data from another device or NFC tag at close range. In many ways, it’s like a contactless payment card that is integrated into a phone. So why are some of the world's most influential companies so excited about it? How Does NFC Work? NFC devices share a core technology with RFID tags, contactless payment cards and inductive-coupling. According to the Forum, NFC can operate in three modes: Reader/writer mode: A reader/writer can collect and write information on a smart tag. What Can NFC Be Used For?
What's The Fuss About Mobile Payments? Mobile_paypers (PDF) eBay: Mobile Sales Grew From $600 Million To $2 Billion In 2010. eBay has announced that global mobile sales generated nearly $2 billion in 2010, up from $600 million in 2009. To be clear, we’re not talking revenues here but gross merchandise volume. Nevertheless, a clear sign that mobile ecommerce has reached a tipping point. eBay earlier announced that global sales were up 166 percent to $230 million from Nov. 25 to Dec. 25 from the same period last year, so the holiday season was a clear catalyst for much of that growth.
The ecommerce company says its mobile apps, which give users access to eBay’s global marketplace on the go, have been downloaded more than 30 million times in eight languages, and in over 190 countries. The United Kingdom has apparently been the fastest adopter of mcommerce, with more Brits shopping through the eBay app than anywhere else in Europe. Germany and the UK combined generated nearly one-third of all eBay’s mobile sales in 2010.
Other tidbits shared by eBay: - 94 bids are made every minute via eBay’s mobile apps worldwide.