The mobile revolution is taking the financial services industry by storm. In less than five years it is predicted that the number of mobile phone owners using their device for banking purposes will double to over 1.75 billion. Banks cannot ignore the implications of what this means to their future business models. A mobile-first approach will be essential in leading the way.
The blazing sales rate of Apple Inc.’s new iPhones during the final quarter of 2014 shattered the company’s own expectations, and Apple Pay’s rollout was “extremely positive,” helping drive historic revenues, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook told analysts this week.
Apple Pay continues to make major inroads just three months into its existence, Samsung preps to challenge and Google gains 200,000 online merchants.
Consumers in both developed and developing countries have embraced their mobile devices to check balances, make payments and conduct other financial activities. As a result, mobile banking has become a must-have offering for financial institutions. However, many are still working out how to go beyond the basics to add value for customers, increase engagement and maximise the return on the mobile channel investment.
E-commerce giant Amazon ended the beta test of its mobile wallet app this week, but didn’t say whether it was shuttering the wallet for good.
Google Wallet is reportedly in talks to buy NFC-based mobile wallet rival Softcard, causing speculation about how the combination might stack up against Apple Pay and other emerging wallet concepts.
PayPal this week announced a partnership with Microsoft to provide a new POS approach for small businesses to accept cards payments using the computer titan’s Surface Pro 3 tablet and certain Windows-based phones.
Community banks, which continue to show interest in prepaid but may not have the resources to build their own programs, have a new quick way to enter the market, according to Cachet Financial Solutions.
Shortly after Softcard unveiled Tappy, a puppet starring in a campaign to educate consumers about Softcard and mobile payments, the NFC-based mobile payment initiative backed by AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile has laid off approximately 60 employees.
Nearly 200 ATMs in the Chicago area are going cardless under a new initiative from Wintrust Financial and FIS.
Nine banks in Poland are preparing to launch mobile payments services via host card emulation (HCE) technology early this year, according to Visa Europe.
Several major British banks reportedly are in negotiations with Apple to bring the tech giant’s Apple Pay service to the U.K. before the midway point of this year.
Drivers soon will be able to pay with Apple Pay when filling up at Chevron stations, now that the fuel chain has announced plans to integrate the contactless payment system into its pumps.
The mobile payments piece of Starbucks’ partnership with Square has ended.
Industry experts earlier this year predicted abundant M&A activity in the payments industry, and they are being proved correct right to the very end of 2014.
One of the trends of 2014 was its delivery of technology that we had been promised for years but had fallen short until now. Siri, Cortana and Google Now all make good on the sci-fi staple of the voice-activated computer. Virtual reality has been attempted many times, but it seems that the Oculus Rift may have finally cracked it. And biometric authentication, while often included in devices but rarely used, is now commonly used by owners of new iPhones to unlock their devices thanks to Touch ID.
Apple in recent weeks has become somewhat more accommodating to consumers who use PayPal or Google Wallet. For example, consumers in the U.S. and U.K. now may use PayPal when making purchases on Apple’s online store.
NCR Corp. today announced the NCR Silver POS system now includes a feature enabling merchants to easily add LevelUp, the mobile payments and loyalty network, to customer payment options.
The growth in consumer popularity of mobile bill pay features continues unabated as 27 million U.S. households with access to the Internet are paying at least one bill from their phones, an increase of nearly 70 percent compared with 2013, according to The Seventh Annual Billing Household Survey from Fiserv.
If Maxwell the talking pig can show a police officer his proof of Geico insurance on a smartphone, why not a driver’s license?
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc has signed a 7-year agreement with Virgin Money to develop digital banking products and services for Virgin Money customers.
Millions of dollars keep flowing into the payments industry as investors recently showed support for advanced payments cards from Dynamics Inc., Stripe’s e-commerce solutions and a digital-only Atom Bank.
Department store Kohl’s Corp. expects to enjoy the fruits of combining a mobile payments app with loyalty this holiday season.
China UnionPay continues to take steps to make it easier for its customers to make payments on their mobile devices.
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc is getting a major capital infusion, landing a £49.2 million (US$77 million) investment from the trio of MasterCard, Santander Group and Telefónica.
While online retailers roll their Black Friday bargains over to Cyber Monday, research shows that an increasing amount of online sales are being made via smartphones and tablets, and this trend is continuing – but this does not mean smaller crowds, as consumers are also switching to ‘click & collect’ services.
Holiday shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend was slightly lower than the previous year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
UGO Wallet, an NFC mobile wallet developed by UGO Mobile Solutions and Canadian banks President’s Choice Financial and TD Bank Group, launched last week and is available to customers of Canada’s three largest wireless carriers.
Is it a surprise to anyone in the payments industry that the word “contactless” was a finalist this year as Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year?
Monitise plans to raise £49.2 million through extensions of its relationships with Santander, Telefónica and MasterCard. The money raised will be used to ‘support the development and accelerated roll-out of its global platform capabilities’.
Gift card exchange Cardpool is partnering with LevelUp to make the most coveted gift—the gift card—more valuable by enabling LevelUp users to exchange unused and partially used gift cards for LevelUp credits at more than 14,000 participating merchants.
The recent launch of the Apple Pay wallet app on the latest iterations of iPhone handsets has created a flurry of activity among m-payments providers trying to attract as many consumers as they can to their solutions.
Virtual Piggy Inc. has unveiled a new prepaid card targeted for use by teens, who can use the card to shop at brick-and-mortar stores within limits set and managed by their parents.
Apple Pay has generated significant buzz since it launched on Oct. 21—and more than 1 million credit cards were registered in the payment app within 72 hours—but Leon Majors, president of the payments practice at Phoenix Marketing International, presented research in Chicago last week at BAI Retail Delivery 2014 that suggests Apple may have some of the same difficulties that have plagued other mobile wallets, including low acceptance.
A bug-eyed puppet in the shape of a POS device might be just what Softcard needs to get consumers thinking about tapping their phones more often to pay at the POS.
Popular social messaging service Snapchat is the latest tech provider to throw its hat into the P2P money transfer ring.
Merchants using “Google Wallet for digital goods” to accept online payments on their Websites soon will have to find a new provider, and consumers no longer will be able to check out with the Google Wallet for digital goods when buying digital merchandise.
Consumers who use digital channels for their banking conduct more transactions per month than those who don’t but are less expensive to service. Maximize your m-banking adoption and usage with features that move the needle.
Square, considered by many to be a trailblazer in the arena of mobile card readers that plug into smartphones, today has announced the San Francisco-based company is accepting pre-orders from U.S. merchants on a new Square reader that accepts EMV chip cards.
Skrill, provider of online payment technologies to merchants and consumers, and Microsoft4Afrika, an initiative launched last year to help accelerate Africa’s economic development and to improve its global competitiveness, together are launching an e-commerce portal enabling Africans to use their mobile wallets to buy from global Internet brands, access free educational content and use Microsoft software.
