The Mobile Money Network™ Blog

Mobile Payments Boost on the UK High Street #1

The most significant news in mobile payments this week was the announcement by Mastercard of their partnership with Everything Everywhere. EE, which runs Orange and T-Mobiles branded services, has a 27 million customer base, so this initiative will have a huge impact on pushing mobile payments mainstream. The five year deal will use NFC and make contactless payment available to 100,000 retailers in the UK. One of their priorities is to make mobile payments accessible to smaller retailers. While the media are proclaiming the start of digital wallet wars, we’re really pleased to see that major players are getting involved in the industry and building solid partnerships. With offerings from Barclaycard, O2, Visa (having announced its intention with MMN) already on the table in the UK, the next step is to get consumers to adopt mobile payments in their everyday life. We ask, is NFC and contactless enough, when multichannel is the real opportunity of mobile?

Retailers race to catch digital rivals

This is the headline to an article on the BBC website written by Infosys, one of the world’s largest IT services companies. Infosys knows that it’s not just the transactions that make mobile payments so exciting, but the data that goes with them – enabling retailers to know their customers better, and provide better service to them. We believe that we can help retailers not only in the short term with mobile checkout, but longer term too, improving the ROI of media, and providing better, more relevant service to customers.

And this desire for data is globally driven

Increased competition about how to pay for goods is inevitably pushing payment fees down. However the crucial bonus about mobile payments is the data which accompanies the purchase. When a consumer buys a product with cash, the retailer can’t trace how or why that purchase was made. However when the payment is made on a mobile, the retailer can follow the journey and make rich insights through data stored on the phone including search and location. With such focus on data, payment companies can use the information to make offers to customer more personal but it’s therefore vital that their services are highly secure.

More Ways to Pay by Smartphone 

Talking of which, SumUp, the latest Square clone, is opening for business across Europe, including the UK. The service, which offers mobile payments through the attachment of a dongle to a smartphone or tablet, has £20 million backing. It will be interesting to see how it stands up against Square when Jack Dorsey’s company reach our shores.

Mobile Payments Boost on the UK High Street #2

This week Matthew Smith, director of mobile strategy at Carphone Warehouse, was interviewed about the Carphone Warehouse Mobile Checkout app, powered by Simply Tap. The company are actively ‘educating’ smartphone customers about the app by registering them at point of sale. With 3000 products available to purchase from retailers including Thorntons and HMV, it’s an excellent example of how mobile can be used on the High Street. It will be interesting to see where Carphone Warehouse’s 3.5 million customer base start shopping with their app, but who doesn’t like playing around with a new phone?

 

For more news and opinion about mobile payments, follow @theMMN on Twitter. If you’d like to get in touch, please call us on 020 7079 3930.

 

Photo by Garry Knight