Author: Dan Gendro

A recent study suggests the launch of a new UK payments service has pushed the nation into the top m-payments market spot, worldwide.

After comparing international mobile payments markets, a UK Payments Council research paper claims that the United Kingdom is the m-payments market leader and that the country’s success is related to the P2P Paym service, which was launched this past April by the Payment’s Council.

The report compared the person-to-person (P2P) mobile payment services of several countries.

Aside from the UK, the countries that were studied and compared included the US, Japan, Sweden, India and Kenya. The report compared a variety of aspects, some of which included infrastructure, ownership, the mobile banking experiences of customers, and speed.

Adrian Kamellard, the Payment Council’s chief executive said about the report that “Looking round the world makes it clear that Paym is a world leading service, even when compared with trailblazers such as M-Pesa in Africa. The UK payments industry’s collaborative model of change, which builds upon our existing world class real-time payments infrastructure has delivered real benefits for customers.” Kamellard added that unlike other parts of the world, Paym is a free service for customers “at the point of use.”

He went on to say that mobile technology has altered human behavior around the world and that this has transformed the way that people carry out many of their important daily tasks. He added that it is interesting to observe how technological, cultural and local regulatory differences affect how a new mobile payments solution is applied.

Paym is the only mobile payments service in the world that is industry-wide to use P2P.

In addition to this finding, the Payment’s Council report also claimed it found that the US and Japan are behind Sweden and the UK when it comes to delivering P2P m-payment services. It also said that it is a struggle for India to make its service as universal is it is in Sweden and the UK due to the country’s geographic and demographic disparity. In addition, it noted that Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile payments service has increased the nation’s inclusion and financial capability, which previously had an infrastructure lacking in payments and banking.

CardSpring is purchased by the massively popular social networking service.

Twitter has announced that it has bought CardSpring – an application platform with a simple API that enables developers to connect digital apps to debit or credit cards – and the social networking giant believes that the payments company will help it provide card-linked offers to consumers, which could help boost its social commerce.

CardSpring is well known for its easy-to-use application programming interface (API).

Commenting on the recent acquisition, CardSpring stated in a blog post that “At Twitter, we will continue to grow the adoption of our platform and work with our publisher, financial, and retail partners to create new, innovative commerce experiences for consumers.”

Twitter has previously provided its users with the ability to obtain discounts and deals. According to Twitter, users can already “surprise someone with a coffee, or even add items to their online shopping cart – all directly from a Tweet.” The company stated that as they work on its commerce future, they are confident that CardSpring and the technology it has developed will be a “great fit”.

There are different ways that Twitter could use CardSpring. As an example, it could use it to allow card-linked offers. For instance, a user could receive a tweet from a merchant containing a discount, which would ask the user to enter their credit card number. Later, when the user makes a purchase from this merchant either in-store or online, CardSpring would recognize the credit card number and automatically apply the discount.

At the same time, it would provide the merchant with performance analytics of their offer. Thus, these types of promotions could increase Twitter’s relevancy to local businesses interested in boosting their in-store sales and not just their follows and retweets.

The recent acquisition could lead to a brighter social commerce future for Twitter over Facebook.

Prior to Twitter’s announcement, Facebook revealed it had begun testing its Buy button, which allows online shoppers to buy goods and services directly from their News Feed. However, the one major social commerce advantage that Twitter may have over its competitor is its retweet feature. On Facebook, users can click “Like” on a post and they can also “Share” it, but a retweet immediately shares a message to all of that user’s followers. In other words, it gives merchants a much greater chance of growing their customer base because retweets are likely to reach more users and re-sharing is a huge part of the Twitter culture.