Mobile Payment: a future without a
wallet
Smartphone has
replaced lots of things that we used to carry them with us, like watches, alarm
clock, MP3, GPS gadget. And a future where smartphone can replace your wallet
by providing a portable payment is not so far. We have just started first waves
of gadgets use for portable payment, and if your company wants to catch up with
this trend, maybe it’d be a good idea to start research whether this payment is
suitable for your company.
How does it work?
There are lots
of ways for you to provide the customer how to pay on the street. We will
explain in detail these feature in order to help you choose which way is the
best.
Portable E-commerce
One of the most
popular ways is a link or a button to your website, allow customers to import
their payment information through their phone. For example, the giant PayPal
guy provides a code and a button that you can add it in your mobile website.
Avin Arumugam,
an advance marketing management for mobile payment in PayPal stated: “MEC is a
short term for Mobile Express Checkout, and it re-create a convenience of
PayPal Express Checkout on mobile phone and application. For example, when a
customer visits a commercial website, he sees the PayPal blue button… and they
can log in to PayPal and pay through choosing PayPal options”.
In order to help
customer easier, you can consider a famous online payment services so customers
can be guaranteed about the security of the trade (which you don’t have to do
it by yourself) and they don’t have to import their long and inconvenient
credit information. For example, Arumugam stated that “Everybody knows that PayPal
is a reliable name. We have 12 years experienced in internet payment. We are
“the Payment” and we manage the risk and have the best ability to block the fraud
– deal with online payment is what we meant to do”. In short, a trustworthy
online payment provider will add more credibility for your trade.
Application. Another feature is to
create a mobile application that customers can download to pay for you through
their smartphone. For example, by integratingpayment in just one-click,
everybody can find and buy available products on your website. For example,
Amazon.com has just released Amazon App (for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and
Windows 7) allows you to search, read other customers comments and browse other
related products and buy it directly through your phone.
Another example is a Starbucks application (available for iOS,
Android and BlackBerry), where you can re-cash your Starbucks credits through
application. You can also check the balance of the credit and monitor My
Starbucks Reward bonus.
Credit card on the road. One of the most
interesting mobile payments is Square, which was originally a tiny credit card
reader that you can plug in an audio phone jack (it supports Android or more,
and like iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch run iOS 4.0 or more) and read those credit
car’sstrokes. Credits can be processed by Square application on the phone. In
order to keep secrets, this application in accordance to VeriSign Trusted and
PCI (Payment Card Industry), therefore you can make sure with the customer that
their information is safe. Money can withdraw in bank account in your next day.
Square collect 2.75% each time you swipe the card but unlike other credit card
payment service, no monthly fee or signed contract.
Free-wiredstore. Upcoming mobile
payments will be NFC and RFID. These two technologicalstores use the hardware
that was installed in your mobile phone and will be recognized by a chip reader
at a money counter or at the cash register. The payment is free-wired so we
don’t need any physical interaction with the customer.
Both NFC and RFID use radio frequency waves for delivering
information, but the NFC devices usually work in the small sphere – normally 4
inch or less.
Apple, RIM (the company after BlackBerry), Motorola, HP, Nokia and
Sony Ericsson announce that they already have planned for releasing mobile
phone with installed NFC soon. At this moment, NFC seems to be preferred than
RFID because small range connections will block hackers from stealing your
information.
When technology is used for available NFC stores, maybe customers
will care more about accept this convenient payment method.
Use PayPal Mobile application for sending money through your mobile
phone.
P2P transmission. When you need to pay
for a person, for example, you want to share the bill or pay back the money for
somebody but you don’t have any cash, there are options for payment between
people and people. For example, two PayPal users can solve the debt easily by
using PayPal Mobile application to transfer the money. All you need is open
this application, choose tab Send, enter the money, and provide the email or
the mobile phone numbers of the person you want to transfer this money. If
he/she doesn’t have a phone, you can send a request to remind you.
Square allows you to scan and receive credits card by using Android
or iOS smartphones
Why using mobile payment?
Payment using mobile phone is the future way. For example, in 2010,
PayPal observed the 750 billion dollars amount of money from over 5 billion
users. “Let’s compare this with 2008, where we saw 28 million dollars and 2009
was 140 million. You can see the ballistic. In 2011, we estimated that there
will more than 2 billion mobile payment through PayPal Mobile”, Arumugam stated.
IE Market Research Corporation guesses that the total value of simple mobile
payment will rise about 1.13 trillion in 2014. Beside, this system is easy to
be used. Instead of paying monthly service like you do that with the credit
card, these mobile payment systems collect a stable fee for each trade. Overall,
they will be no extra fee if you more or less trade. The mobile payment system
will also process faster other traditional credit card system because you don’t
need to print the bill, let the customer sign and find a place to store the
bill.
