The 'will they' / 'won't they' speculation about Apple enabling the iPhone 5 for NFC goes on. For a long time, it was considered a certainty that the iPhone 5 would include NFC. Then, last week, the Independent reported that the will not, due to a lack of technical standards.
Forbes then quoted an unnamed source at Apple, saying that they would include NFC. The New York Times now reports that Apple will include NFC and that Qualcomm will supply chip - but not necessarily for the upcoming iPhone 5 release. Add to all these conflicting reports the amplification effect of the blogosphere and you have total confusion!
However, what we do know for sure is that Google is enabling Android for NFC and that most headset manufacturers are including a chip in their phones - considering the opportunities inherent in NFC, I am sure Apple won't be too far behind.
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Monday, 14 March 2011
Apple Drops NFC for iPhone 5
According to a number of newspapers, Apple has revealed to several of the major UK mobile phone operators that it will not include NFC in its iPhone 5.
This is a big blow to mobile payments, as NFC is widely viewed as the most likely platform and Apple was seen as a company that would bring it to the mainstream.
Apple's apparent reason for not including NFC in iPhone 5 is the lack of clear standards. They have therefore decided to postpone their NFC-launch until 2012, which will enable them to develop a set of proprietary standards in the meantime.
Google, along with a whole host of handset manufacturers and carriers, are are still committed to rolling out NFC in 2011, so it will be interesting to see how much headway they will make without Apple's unique ability to launch new technologies to the mainstream.
This is a big blow to mobile payments, as NFC is widely viewed as the most likely platform and Apple was seen as a company that would bring it to the mainstream.
Apple's apparent reason for not including NFC in iPhone 5 is the lack of clear standards. They have therefore decided to postpone their NFC-launch until 2012, which will enable them to develop a set of proprietary standards in the meantime.
Google, along with a whole host of handset manufacturers and carriers, are are still committed to rolling out NFC in 2011, so it will be interesting to see how much headway they will make without Apple's unique ability to launch new technologies to the mainstream.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Mobile Wallet: the Battle is Shaping Up
The attached article provides a very interesting perspective on the various players that are aiming to build your mobile wallet.
It assesses 3 different groups:
They will also be better able to leverage platform/network effects than the other players, particularly by triggering innovation through app markets, etc.
This is not to say that carriers and banks will not play a part. Particularly banks will still be a key provider of payments solutions, but probably through the platform providers' payment interface (i.e. Google Checkout or iTunes/iCash). This way, Apple and Google will gain a foothold in the payments market, without having to take ownership of the complexity of the full payments value chain.
Read what the author of the article says.
http://snasm.com/article/nfc-2011-whos-building-your-mobile-wallet?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
It assesses 3 different groups:
- Mobile platform providers (Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.)
- Mobile carriers
- Banks
They will also be better able to leverage platform/network effects than the other players, particularly by triggering innovation through app markets, etc.
This is not to say that carriers and banks will not play a part. Particularly banks will still be a key provider of payments solutions, but probably through the platform providers' payment interface (i.e. Google Checkout or iTunes/iCash). This way, Apple and Google will gain a foothold in the payments market, without having to take ownership of the complexity of the full payments value chain.
Read what the author of the article says.
http://snasm.com/article/nfc-2011-whos-building-your-mobile-wallet?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Monday, 14 February 2011
Seamless Receipts: $1.5M to Growth its e-Receipts & Marketing Platform
Seamless Receipts, a New York-based electronic receipts company, announced on Friday that it has received $1.5M funding from various venture capital investors. The company delivers technology that enables merchants to replace paper with electronic receipts and deliver customized marketing messages.
The objective of SR’s solution is to drive offline customers online, improve engagement and increase sales. To enable this, they offer basic components, such as email marketing, promotions and social sharing functionalities to more advanced solutions, such as group buying and reviews.
In additionally, SR has partnered with Fitzgerald Analytics to deliver simple but powerful analytics plug-ins. With these components and with proper POS integration, SR can deliver:
· Analysis of “shopping basket mix” (“What products do customers buy at the same time? How can they encourage larger purchases?)
· Optimization of the timing, targeting, and content of messages to customers
· Measurement of customer loyalty, return-visit incentives, and other data-driven tactics to improve marketing results
This is information that is generally not available to smaller merchants, unless they invest heavily in costly POS systems.
To support distribution of the system, Seamless Receipts announced a partnership with Canadian Retail Solutions (CRS) last year. CRS provides POS solutions to small and mid-sized Canadian merchants and will integrate Seamless Receipts with its Retail Pro POS solution. To support further growth, we would expect Seamless Receipts to announce more such partnerships in the time to come.
However, Seamless Receipts is of course not the first company to provide such services. Apple has long used their email receipts as a marketing platform with customers and Square builds much of its business around the improved analyses it provides smaller merchants and opportunities to use receipts as a communication platform.
Still, not many stand-alone companies offer similar services, and Seamless Receipts’ independence and ability to freely partner with POS providers should provide a great platform for accelerated growth.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Buyster: Doomed from the Start ?
Three French telecoms, Orange, Bouygues and SFR, yesterday announced that they are launching Buyster, a mobile payment solution, to compete with PayPal, Google, Apple and others in the French market.
While I believe there to be enormous scope for innovation in mobile payments and opportunities for new entrants to take a leadership role in the industry, I am quite dubious to this effort. The basis of this venture is clearly that these telecom giants want to leverage their combined market position to take a cut of the payments market. But, Buyster does not seem to offer anything in terms of innovative or improved features.
Although they have signed a few big-brand online retailers and may see some initial traction, I would be surprised if this partnership is around 3 years from now !
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/29fe9788-2fec-11e0-a7c6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1D62AI4yo
While I believe there to be enormous scope for innovation in mobile payments and opportunities for new entrants to take a leadership role in the industry, I am quite dubious to this effort. The basis of this venture is clearly that these telecom giants want to leverage their combined market position to take a cut of the payments market. But, Buyster does not seem to offer anything in terms of innovative or improved features.
Although they have signed a few big-brand online retailers and may see some initial traction, I would be surprised if this partnership is around 3 years from now !
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/29fe9788-2fec-11e0-a7c6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1D62AI4yo
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Great Article about NFC Deployment by Non-Payment Players (Fast Co.)
In the below article, Fast Company lays out plans for NFC deployment by a range of non-payment players.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1723276/companies-battling-to-make-your-nfc-wireless-credit-card-dreams-come-true
- BMW: introducing NFC technology in their keys, enabling the owner to open doors with NFC, store train and flight tickets on the car key and receive a multitude of data about the car, such as; is it locked?, how much fuel does it have?, where is it parked?, etc
- LG: developing both NFC enabled phones and point of sale terminals. By getting involved with POS terminals, it is involved with the whole ecosystem and may better carve out a meaningful role
- Google, Apple and Nokia: as we I have previously covered, these guys are all developing NFC devices
http://www.fastcompany.com/1723276/companies-battling-to-make-your-nfc-wireless-credit-card-dreams-come-true
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Apple: Taking NFC to the Mainstream?
The hottest area of speculation at the moment is around Apple’s entry in the payments market. Already early last year, it was being reported that Apple was putting together a payments team, while patent applications revealed that they would likely introduce NFC the iPhone 5, which will probably launch in June 2011.
Now, considering that NFC has been around for a long time and that a flurry of prominent companies, from Visa to the major phone carriers to Google, already have NFC enabled products or trials – why is Apple able to generate so much excitement?
Simply put, Apple has a remarkable track record of popularizing new technologies with a user experience that seamlessly bridges the hardware and software. Like they have previously applied their midas touch to the personal computer, the music player, the mobile phone and most recently the tablet, people are eagerly awaiting what they will do to payments.
Most interestingly, people are asking how they will enter the market? What role will they play in the payments value chain? Consensus says that they will probably use a version of iTunes as a mobile wallet. However, it will be interesting to see if they simply have their customers pay with their credit cards through iTunes or if they attempt to link directly to customers’ bank accounts, and essentially do their own clearing and settlement.
Moreover, what features will they offer their customers? Will they start their own offers and rewards program, similar to what Google is developing? will they do anything cool with the data they collect? How will they extend NFC outside payments – e.g. identification and ticketing?
Also, will they enter the merchant side of the industry? Will they enable the iPhone or iPad as payment terminals by developing NFC readers that plug directly in to the devices? Will they offer data services?
Another interesting perspective is if they will open up their payments platform (iTunes) for external developers to develop application, similar to what Apple has done for the iPhone and iPad and PayPal has done in payments. We are starting to see some interesting developments coming out of PayPal X and cannot even begin to imagine where Apple could take this market.
Still, with all this excitement, we should still remind ourselves that not all Apple launches are a success. Apple TV is a classic example. The payments industry is probably also more complex than industries Apple has previously taken on. It is the quintessential network business, which might not be a good match for Apple’s notoriously proprietary and closed approach.
It would take time for the iPhone 5 to build a user base that is sufficiently attractive for merchants to justify new point of sale investments. If acceptance is not wide from day one, all the excitement that surrounds the launch could whittle away and slow application innovation, etc.
Despite all the excitement and endless opportunities, we should therefore remember that Apple faces big challenges and stiff competition in this field. Still, the buzz generated by an Apple launch, along with all the other launches upcoming launches, could mean that 2011 is finally the breakout year for NFC.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
3 Articles on Innovation in Payments
The Rise of the Hybrid Startup
In this article, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, argues that 2011 will be the year of the Hybrid Startup. Unlike the traditional clicks-and-mortar businesses, that simply add an online presence to its physical-world store, the hybrid business leverages the best of both the online and offline worlds to build entirely new business models.
Hybrid businesses will enhance customers’ shopping experiences by integrating virtual elements, initially through mobile phones. Examples are location-based offers, recommendations, augmented reality experiences and so forth.
As hybrid business are already adding an online layer to the physical-world shopping experience, one would expect that they would take the payment online as well.
Point of Sale Revolution: Transformation of Payment Acceptance
Point of Sale (POS) acceptance, a once sleepy, commoditised, add-on to the merchant acquiring business, is in the midst of a transformation, with several game-changing players entering the market.
There are three key drivers behind the innovation:
1. Internet ubiquity at the point of transaction: virtually all merchants have transitioned from dial-up to always-on connections, facilitating an explosion of new capabilities that integrate traditional terminal functions with new loyalty, marketing, and information services
2. Wireless proliferation: merchants are increasingly equipping the employees with sophisticated, mobile POS tools, such as the iPhone or iPad, which enables the merchant to fundamentally change the shopping experience
3. Emergence of more sophisticated loyalty solutions: merchants constantly seek to develop more attractive loyalty and marketing programmes. POS innovation is enabling them to integrate loyalty more seamlessly in the POS experience and to tailor offers more effectively by leverage the data they captured.
These drivers are significantly altering the POS space and making it one of the more innovative parts of the payments value chain.
Mobile Apps Wars’ Impact on the Payment Biz
In this article, David Evans points out that it is only just over two years since Steve Jobs open up the iPhone for external apps (October 2008). There are now more than 100,000 apps for the iPhone and, for many customers, this has become an equally important reason to buy the phone as the phone itself. Since then, Google Android has developed a successful app market of its own, while Blackberry and others are also having a go.
A number of these apps are payment related. Transactions and PlanetAuthorize have both developed apps that enable merchants to accept payments anywhere, while Yodlee and Monitise have developed online banking apps. However, Evans argues that these are all relatively obvious innovations.
The key, he argues, “is that with all these developers, all around the world, thinking about apps, it is probable that someone — perhaps many someone's — will come up with a killer app that will revolutionize payments”. “Those who believe in a linear path from mobile phone, to mobile phone plus NFC, to mobile phone as payment device at POS are likely to get a rude awakening”.
The payment industry could experience the type of groundbreaking innovation that the computer industry experienced after the launch of the PC or the mobile phone industry experienced after Apple opened up for external apps.
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