The era of the mobile wallet

Did you ever imagine the possibility of making payments at the grocery store or coffee shop using your cell phone? I mean, just your cell phone; I did not. Apparently, we are getting closer to the era of mobile payment system. This is an alternative method that allows users instead of buying with cash, debit or credit cards to use their mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services such as music, videos, transportation fare, parking meters, groceries, coffee, books and much more.

This mobile payment system has been well adopted in many parts of Europe and Asia, and soon will be widely used in the United States.

There are four primary models for mobile payments: premium SMS based transactional payments, direct mobile billing, mobile web payments and contactless NFC, being this one the most commonly used when paying at physical stores. The contactless NFC (Near Field Communication) allows consumers to use a special mobile phone equipped with a smartcard that they wave near a reader module. Also, NFC enables cell phones to wirelessly exchange data when they come into proximity of each other. The equipped devices are suited for contactless payments as well as mobile coupons, customer reward programs, contact information swaps and digital receipts.

Obviously the two tech giants, Apple and Google, have got down to work and are developing ways to adapt to this new technology.

Apple is believed to be working on including this new system for the IPhone 5. Apparently, it would allow users to make payments through their iTunes accounts. This is a great advantage for Apple since the company has a distinctive bond with its customers and iTunes has already millions and millions of users around the world.

On the other hand, Google has already built NFC technology in the most recent version of its Android mobile platform, which gives the company the lead over Apple. Moreover, according to Dave Talach, VeriFone’s Vice President of Global Product Marketing, Google as an advertising and media company is focused in targeting its ads and understanding its audience better; therefore this could facilitate the allocation of coupons and rewards to the users based on their needs and behaviors since they would demand a lot more than only the easiness of wireless payment.

Apple has the customer database, and Google has the tools and tactics to target them better.

Talach, sees Google as a more natural provider of NFC services, but some other such as Siegler, a writer for technology blog, TechCrunch, thinks Google does not have iTunes' infrastructure in place to make this happen.

Let’s wait and see.

The only scenario we will have for sure as NFC gets incorporated into cell phones, retailers, credit card companies, wireless carriers, device makers and operating system providers is a tough competition in the fighting for a slice of the emerging market.

http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2011/03/24/verifone-on-apple-google-and-paypals-nfc-competitiveness/

http://www.nfc-forum.org/aboutnfc/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/iphone-5-nfc/

When Less is More

In these days, companies are striving to give each customer the opportunity to be part of their brands or products; given them the chance to express their opinions and feedbacks about every little thing the company does or does not.

Companies want to keep us so satisfied that sometimes they give us too many options that at the end confuse us and distract us from a main purpose. This could be the case of MySpace, the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006.

The fact the MySpace website could be personalized from the top to the bottom by each member did not give it a pattern, so it became like those complicated sites where we do not know where to go to find the information we are looking for since they do not have a clear layout. Each friend was a different world, with different colors and format, and it seemed each of them belonged basically to a different network. At the end of the day, people would put so much information that was very tiring just to visit their profiles.

When Facebook took over, with a simpler layout and the same format for everybody, it became friendlier to users; it was simpler! We know where the pictures are, the comments, the events and the friends of our friends.

MySpace gave too many tools to their users when they were not prepared for it. Maybe it did not move fast enough or moved faster than the users. Either one case or the other, they are undergoing through a major crisis because of that. The steps to keep up with consumer’s needs and demands were not taken, and someone else came with a proposal that filled that hole and satisfied them.

The same thing could happen to Facebook or Twitter if they stay with the same dynamic throughout a certain period of time or if they move on faster than what the users can handle. We, as marketers, have to listen to our customers and know what make them to be satisfied. We have to be awake and alert to the signs consumers are sending us; otherwise, we can end up in a precipice as the one MySpace is nowadays.

Sources:

http://www.myspace.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/technology/27myspace.html

http://www.facebook.com

http://www.communityspark.com/too-many-features-can-harm-your-community/