Category: Apps

Mobile payments will soon be 200 times bigger than they are now

A recent study has forecasted that within a span of 7 years from now, the industry will reach $3 trillion.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch has now released a report in which it has stated that in a period of 7 year, mobile payments will have grown by 200 times their previous size and will be worth more than $3 trillion.

If this prediction is correct, then wallet and banking apps, retailers, and telecoms are about to benefit greatly.

The report indicated that those who are most likely to benefit from this growth of mobile payments are: banking, telecom, IT, and mobile wallet firms. The report stated that “In India, we consider mobile payments to be both an opportunity (for banks, telcos and new players) and threat (due to dis-intermediation, more to the traditional banks). We estimate the value of mobile banking, estimated at just USD16 billion today to rise 200x in 7 years to more than USD 3,000 billion.”

It is also expected that mobile payments will make up 10 percent of the total transactions in that country.

Mobile Payments to GrowThis is quite the increase, considering that for the 2015 financial year, smartphone payments made up only 0.1 percent of the total. The report stated that this will be a considerable opportunity for many companies involved in that industry to better their “competitive positioning.” Equally, the report noted that it would mean that there would suddenly be considerable competition making its way into the space that had previously been held by public sector banks.

As the payments technology evolves, it is expected that the use of paper cash will have dropped to under 2 percent. The report predicted that the range of alternative methods of payment will lead to a gradual decrease in the use of cash throughout the economy, and that electronic payments will help to ease the lending rates and will encourage growth over time.

It pointed out that among the primary drivers behind the growth of the use of alternative transactions will be in the improvements of mobile payments through greater smartphone penetration. That penetration in India is expected to double in the country’s young population over the next three years. As 60 percent of the population is younger than 35 years old, this represents a massive shift in digital technology use.

Siri voice recognition lets it recognize the device owner

Users of iPhones may or may not be comforted by the fact that their smartphones may know the sound of their voices.

Apple users have become very used to the sound of the vocal command feature of their devices, and now the Siri voice recognition technology is actually allowing the device to recognize the sound of its own owner.

This allows Siri to compare the voice of the owner of the smartphone to that of other people.

This new feature has been added to the Siri set up process in the latest iOS 9.1 GM. As there is an M9 motion processor built into the latest iPhone devices, this makes it possible for Siri voice recognition to remain functional 24/7. The reason, said the Tech Times, was because the co-processor of the device is always on. Furthermore, due to the latest set up process, these smartphone owners can actually train the recognition feature of Siri by using the built-in device microphone and speaking a few words.

This gives the Siri voice recognition the ability to become accustomed to the voice of a device’s specific user.

iPhone - Siri voice recognition When a phrase has not been stated in a way that is clear, Siri will continue to request that the user repeat it until the entire line has been completely understood. In order to take advantage of the individual voice recognition from Siri, there are five steps that a user must complete. For most people, this should be relatively straight-forward.

That said, there has yet to be official confirmation as to whether or not the outcome of requests will be any different depending on whether or not it is the user’s voice that is detected during a query. Moreover, it isn’t entirely clear whether or not iPhone owners who use their devices bilingually will need to repeat the training in their two different languages. That said, Siri can speak 25 different languages, so it is likely a good idea for an owner to choose his or her primary language for the training for Siri’s recognition of his or her voice.

Before the latest update to iOS, the Siri voice recognition feature required users to take a few exercises. Only after that point could the “Hey, Siri” feature be used because the digital assistant would be able to tell who was talking.