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Mobile commerce competition expected to heat up

Amazon and eBay may clash in the mobile commerce field

Competition in the mobile commerce field is nothing new. Technology firms from around the world are competing with one another in order to develop the next great mobile commerce platform while retailers are working to engage mobile consumers through their own platforms. The popularity surrounding mobile commerce has lead to the emergence of a vast multitude of startup companies that seek to benefit from the success that can be found in the mobile field.

Both companies have high hopes for mobile commerce

Mobile commerce competition may reach a new high as two of the sector’s largest players begin to clash. Both Amazon and eBay boast of a commanding presence in the mobile commerce field. Amazon’s retail power and eBay PayPal division have made the two companies quite formidable, but the two had little occasion to clash in the past. Now that mobile commerce has become a global phenomenon and has shown no signs of slowing down, however, Amazon and eBay are expected to vie for supremacy within the field.

Mobile commerce competition heats upNew service from Amazon aims to make mobile payments more convenient

Amazon recently launched its Login and Pay service, which is meant to make mobile payments more convenient for online shoppers. This service is available to retailers and used to make retailers more accommodating of the needs of mobile consumers. The service itself is quite similar to that offered by PayPal and both Amazon and PayPal feature robust anti-fraud capabilities designed to make the mobile commerce sector somewhat more secure. Amazon may be able to compete with PayPal in the mobile space with its new service, especially as eBay focuses more on expansion rather than the development of new services.

Online sales in the US expected to reach $328 by end of 2016

In the U.S., online sales are expected to reach $327 billion by 2016. PayPal is currently the leading online payment processor, accounting for $7.7 million in transactions on a daily basis. There may be plenty of room for Amazon and eBay to grow into the mobile commerce field side by side, but the two companies share a large consumer base. Both appeal to the same demographic as one another, making it difficult for either company to exist in without competing with one another in some way.

NFC technology is finally beginning to gain ground

The growth of the use of this tech has been quite slow but people are adopting near field communication.

It has been slightly over one year since mobile payments companies, such as banks and network operators, had been doing everything they could to make sure that they had worked NFC technology into their systems so that they would be able to keep up with what they felt was an overwhelmingly large opportunity as enabled devices would flood the marketplace.

They were under the impression that Apple would soon be releasing an enabled device.

Since that time, several Apple devices have been launched and not one of them has included the NFC technology that had been anticipated. Though the preparations for near field communications had skyrocketed, and the tech had been worked into everything from mobile wallets to marketing, the growth of the penetration of the actual devices occurred much more slowly than anticipated.

iPhones still do not feature NFC technology among their options and companies have had to look to other avenues.

nfc technology shows promiseGoogle Wallet, Isis, and even MasterCard have all recently announced that although they have not abandoned their use of NFC technology, they are implementing additional methods in order to make sure that their services would be accessible by a larger number of consumers. For the most part, this has meant that QR codes – the two dimensional barcodes that had once been believed to have limited days left because of the upcoming popularity of near field communication tech – have been added to these massive systems.

That said, it appears that all is not lost for NFC technology. The majority of the latest Android smartphones do contain these chips and as they start to spread throughout the world – and dominate the shipments of smartphones on a global scale – it has meant that systems relating to this tech are starting to launch. Though they haven’t taken off at the rate that had been initially expected, they are now experiencing a healthy, moderate growth.

In fact, according to Strategy Analytics market research, though the expectations for the demand for NFC technology have been reduced, it is still estimated that by the end of 2017, payments using this tech will have reached $48 billion.