Tag: bluesnap

An interview with Ralph Dangelmaier has revealed the critical importance of the smartphone experience.

While at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas, the editor of Mobile Commerce Press, Loreen Worden, had the opportunity to speak with Ralph Dangelmaier, the CEO of BlueSnap, a leading specialist in cart services, about mobile payments and optimization.

Within this interview, Dangelmaier revealed considerable insight into the essential nature of the smartphone channel.

At the moment, one of the largest struggles in mobile payments is the fact that many consumers are abandoning their shopping carts. According to many, including BlueSnap CEO Dangelmaier, this problem has a great deal to do with the fact that far too many retailers are failing to properly optimize their shopping cart experience. This causes consumers to feel that shopping over their smartphones and other small screen devices is inconvenient, difficult, and simply unattractive.

BlueSnap has presented a highly effective solution to this mobile payments struggle for businesses, large and small.

Within the interview with Dangelmaier, he revealed that BlueSnap is already managing to stand out in this highly competitive mobile payments marketplace with their optimized cart services. This is because they have taken the unique tack of partnering with a number of different banks and making their services available in approximately 180 different countries.

Therefore, BlueSnap has stepped away from the disconnected, confused nature of the mobile payments marketplace and has created an intelligent alternative that allows it to choose the bank that will provide the fastest and most convenient transaction for both the merchant and the consumer. For example, if a consumer in London is purchasing an intangible product – such as a digital item like a music file or an app – the best bank would be intelligently selected in order to ensure the transaction is completed at its fastest.

The company also goes above and beyond by consulting with each of its clients in order to discover which banks will provide the best mobile payments services for their specific products and needs. BlueSnap provides a seamless up-sell and consultation process with clients that makes certain that their shopping carts are always optimized for the best experience that is specific to their products. This is enhanced by a personal touch – which allows them to rise above the services provided by PayPal – and has allowed them to become experts in the best and fastest routing of transactions.

Having experienced the shopping cart and now mobile payments transaction optimization business for more than 8 years, BlueSnap has managed to keep ahead of the latest trends by observing and providing precisely what their clients want and need from the online and smartphone based experience. It is this type of strategy that will make the difference in keeping consumers from abandoning their carts and encouraging them to complete the process, giving conversions that much needed shot in the arm.

Google Wallet might be a bust, but according to recent Gartner research, mobile payments are growing dramatically, with transaction values predicted to hit the $235.4 billion mark in 2013. The question is, what do these seemingly synergistic, yet opposing trends, say about the emerging cashless society? And how can merchants navigate the mobile payments landscape?

With all the hype around wallets, you’d expect that lots of people are using them. Not so much. They will account for only 2 percent of total mobile transaction values in 2013 according to Gartner. In spite of all the hype, NFC services like Google Wallet and Isis aren’t catching on with consumers.

The big driver of growth is plain old mobile money transfers, which are projected to make up about 71 percent of total transaction values in 2013.

For those of us who operate in the global payments ecosystem, these statistics are no surprise.  In many regions outside of North America, mobile phones are the single most ubiquitous computing device, and they are used in a wide variety of ways for commerce and payments. In Africa, two-thirds of the Kenyan population filters $13 billion – more than a quarter of the East African country’s gross domestic product – through M-Pesa, which is the world’s leading mobile money network. Many of those transactions are money transfers or country-specific payment approaches.

The mobile payments market is so fluid, complex, and nascent; it’s very difficult for merchants to predict consumer adoption of any given approach.  At the same time, merchants can’t afford to ignore the mobile payments market — it’s simply too large, with huge potential for commerce growth.

Confronted with complexity, many online merchants have limited their payment options to cards and PayPal, bypassing incremental mobile sales using other payment methods. This is a mistake. The most successful ecommerce merchants are both mobile and global. Starbucks is a great example of a global brand that has cracked the code on engaging consumers by integrating mobile payments tightly with the in-store experience and providing loyalty incentives that delight consumers.

For merchants who don’t have the resources of a Starbucks or Amazon, payment processing platforms can simplify the complexity by handling a wide variety of payments worldwide while integrating mobile and online commerce. Instead of placing their bets on a handful of payment methods, merchants can tap into dozens of payment methods, languages and cultural approaches that look quite different depending on whether the consumer lives in Abu Dhabi or Los Angeles.

Merchants can no longer choose between online and mobile payments – they need both to stay competitive.  As mobile phones turn into payment devices, ecommerce will change dramatically, reaching consumers everywhere on a global scale.

Ralph Dangelmeier is CEO of BlueSnap, a global payment service provider powering the checkout process for eCommerce merchants worldwide, and fueling growth for online businesses serving digital, physical and mobile markets. BlueSnap has reinvented the checkout experience by combining the power of four key components: Seamless integration into the storefront, global payment processing, award winning smart subscriptions, and dynamic marketing tools for up-sell at checkout.