Author: Dan Gendro

Country’s largest mobile payment company has launched

A new competitor has emerged in the mobile commerce space. Taiwan Mobile Payment Co., which is now Taiwan’s largest mobile commerce platform, has officially launched with the support of 32 of the country’s major financial institutions. The platform supports NFC-based mobile payments, allowing consumers with smartphones and tablets to make payments in physical stores that have NFC-enabled point-of-sale systems installed. The new platform may be welcome among consumers that have been looking for a new mobile payment service for some time.

New platform will leverage NFC technology to process payments and has strong support from Taiwan’s financial institutions

The mobile payments being made through the new platform will be processed through Taiwan Mobile Payment’s trusted service manager. This system will secure the financial information being used by the platform to authenticate payments. The platform will also support payments made through Visa and MasterCard and can be used to make purchases at more than 30,000 stores throughout the country. The platform also has strong support from various financial institutions, making it more accessible to a wide range of consumers.

Taiwan continues to grow as a prominent mobile commerce market

Taiwan is quickly becoming a very prominent mobile commerce market. Two other services have already emerged in the country, but consumers have been demanding a larger, more capable service for some time. Currently, Taiwan Mobile Payment is the largest mobile payment service provider in Taiwan and has been accredited by both Visa and MasterCard.

New service relies on NFC technology in order to facilitate mobile transactions made from devices equipped with NFC chips

The new mobile commerce platform is expected to work with 20 different smartphone models, most of which are Android devices. These devices are equipped with NFC technology, allowing them to interface with payment platforms that also use this technology. NFC currently makes up much of the backbone of the mobile commerce world. Some payment services have opted to avoid using NFC technology to make their platforms more accessible to those that do not have NFC-enabled mobile devices.

Sales almost doubled over the holiday shopping season in 2014, when compared to the year before.

According to E-bit, a Brazilian e-commerce consultancy, sales that were made over mobile commerce in the country, during the Christmas shopping season, almost doubled in 2014 when compared to the figures that were produced during that same span of time in 2013.

From November 15 through December 24, there was an increase of 96 percent in m-commerce purchases.

The purchases made over mobile commerce represented 8.8 percent of the total online sales that were experienced in the country. Comparatively, in 2013, smartphone and tablet based shopping made up only 4.5 percent of the total online sales, during the same period of time. When it came to revenue, m-commerce also made up 8.8 percent of the total during the holiday shopping period. This represented an increase of 82 percent over the figure generated by the firm in 2013.

A considerable part of the growth in Brazil’s mobile commerce figures were the result of Black Friday’s sales.

E-bit reported that on that one day alone, there was a growth of 609 percent over m-commerce, when compared to Black Friday in 2013. The director of the firm, Pedro Guasti, said that “The share of mobile devices in virtual shopping is already nearing 9%. New entrants – those with no Internet access, as well as those with access from computers – are now migrating to smartphones and tablets”

Among the main drivers of the use of mobile devices for shopping purposes has been their rapid and growing penetration throughout the country. As more consumers own smartphones and tablets, it has caused the amount of marketing and selling targeting consumers using those gadgets to rise considerably. This was made clear, recently, by the panel at the São Paulo based Mobile+ Forum.

Equally, the instability of the broadband connections in Brazil have the potential to frustrate possible customers and have, according to the forum’s panelists, led shoppers to abandon their shopping carts before their transactions are complete. This will clearly be an important hurdle for mobile commerce to overcome if it is to continue it staggering growth rate in the country.