Tag: mobile payments trends

The Central Bank of Nigeria has announced that the transactions are taking off in the country.

According to a recent statement made by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the use of the financial institution’s mobile payments platform within that country has been gaining a great deal of ground.

The ease and convenience of the transactions have proven to be very popular in that part of Africa.

Dipo Fatokun, the director of the banking and payment system department at CBN, explained that mobile payments have been achieving a growing adoption rate in that nation. This announcement was made at the Mobile Money and Financial Inclusion: What’s the Next Big Thing day-long conference in Lagos, which was organized by the Brookings Institution of Washington D.C. and by Leeds Bryan International Limited.

It was also pointed out that as 4G internet service comes to Nigeria, this will only boost mobile payments use.

Fatokun indicated that CBN and mobile network operators had an ongoing agreement that made sure that mobile payments transactions could be maintained in a sustainable way, without hitches or outages. It was also indicated that as the country would soon be moving to 4G internet service, a broader network would be available from the current 3G in Nigeria.

In his statement, he added that “We in central bank on the issue of connectivity are at the last stage of an MoU signing with the Nigeria Communication Satelite (NICOMSAT) such that they would provide WIFI technology at various locations in Nigeria so that connectivity would be made easier.”

It was also explained by Fatokun that CBN has a focus on preventing transaction fraud in its mobile payments system through the use of an established electronic banking guideline which extends to transactions that occur over smartphones and tablets. He added that there are specifications for systems through which business must be conducted. It was also expressed that there are a number of technical details provided for how deployments can be made, and that smartphones do not have any specific security elements as is indicated by NCC, and that they would therefore not function over this channel.

The coffee giant is leading the way in this market as 10 percent of its American purchases use smartphones.

Despite the fact that Starbucks doesn’t have the most generous loyalty or reward programs around, it has most certainly been able to attract the largest number of people to its mobile payments program in the United States.

The minimalistic rewards program does not seem to be doing any damage to the willingness of its customers to pay with smartphones.

The company is continuing to draw new customers and a surprising number of them are using mobile payments to pay for their purchases, even in the United States, which is one of the markets in which the least growth and adoption have been seen. The café chain has continually broken the mold, not only by being successful with the transactions as a whole, but also by doing so using various different types of technique.

Mobile payments have seen considerable struggle with adoption in the United States.

Giants in the industry such as Isis and Google Wallet have essentially fallen flat, so far. Though Square is doing well, it requires mobile devices on the side of the seller, not the consumer. Starbucks, on the other hand, has experienced continual and rapid growth since it first introduced the transaction method.

Ten percent of all American transactions at Starbucks are currently completed using a smartphone. The company has been working very hard to be able to popularize mobile payments and it has managed to overcome the lack of trust that smartphone users have in the security of their devices by basing the system on rechargeable gift cards instead of relying the use of credit or debit cards through their devices.

That said, the actual reason behind the success of Starbucks mobile payments has yet to be identified. Though some have proposed the reward program associated with it, most would agree that it is not a very big incentive. Others feel that it is more convenient than paying through more traditional means. It has also been proposed that the demographic that buys coffee through that chain is also the same one that is more willing to give new technologies a try. Whatever it is, other American companies have yet to replicate it.