Author: Denny

Successful acquisition of Modest may improve PayPal’s presence in the mobile commerce market

PayPal has announced that it has acquired mobile commerce startup Modest. The Modest platform was designed to make mobile shopping much more convenient, introducing the concept of “contextual commerce,” which involves the use of contextual information in order to engage consumers more effectively. Modest has become a specialist in this aspect of the mobile space and has enabled merchants to sell products in an effective manner on a variety of platforms.

PayPal continues to establish dominance in the mobile payments field

PayPal has established a very strong presence in the mobile commerce market, having been an early pioneer of mobile payments. The company has been making several acquisitions in recent years in order to establish a greater foothold in this space. In 2013, PayPal acquired Braintree, which augmented the company’s position in the mobile commerce space and gave PayPal access to promising new technology that is being used to facilitate transactions.

Contextual commerce could become a powerful tool for PayPal

Regarding the acquisition, PayPal sees a great deal of promise in contextual commerce, believing that it represents a new frontier for the overall commerce space. This frontier is growing quickly and Modest is one of the few companies that have managed to establish a prominent foothold in this growing sector. The acquisition of Modest may allow PayPal to provide better services to merchants that are becoming more interested in engaging mobile consumers, but how PayPal and Modest will work together is not yet clear.

Modest will further augment PayPal’s ability to serve mobile-centric merchants and consumers

Modest allows its users to construct mobile applications or integrate an online store into their existing application. This allows them to sell products through editorial content on blogs or through advertisements and similar content, leveraging the power of “buy” buttons that have begun gaining popularity in the mobile media space. The Modest team will be working with Braintree in order to make mobile payments for PayPal more comprehensive. This represents the first acquisition that PayPal has made since it split from eBay.

The new payments app will be called the SBI Buddy and it is going to be launched by the financial institution.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has now announced that it intends to jump into the rapidly growing mobile wallet category, that already features large players in the country such as Pocket, from ICICI Bank, and PayZapp, from HDFC.

The bank has revealed that it is planning to take part in this market, getting in while it is still very young.

A recent report from UBS and KPMG has shown that the mobile banking using population of India is the youngest in the world. In fact, those using their smartphones for purposes such as checking accounts and for mobile wallet apps are notably younger than the users in Europe and the United States. That report cautioned banks by saying that if they do not establish solid mobile banking strategies, they are at risk of losing their customers, and failing to be able to take advantage of sizeable cross-selling opportunities over the short term, while harming their competitive advantage over the longer term.

The report explained that banks are now taking on strategies that involve mobile wallet and banking apps.

In this way, banks of all sizes are taking on an attitude of “mobile first,” while the larger institutions are working on gathering up technology startups that will give them the ability to keep up with the rapidly changing and evolving industry. The report stated that “Indian customers demonstrate the highest likelihood of changing banks driven by the availability of better mobile banking services.”

It is also important to point out that SBI isn’t the only financial institution that is currently working on developing a mobile banking or payment app to enter into the industry at this point. YES Bank and Axis Bank have also recently revealed that they will be launching their own mobile apps and that these wallets will be available to customers very soon.

The SBI Buddy mobile wallet application will soon become available to current customers of the bank, as well as to certain other subscribers. The bank has already partnered up with a number of merchants, which mean that once an m-banking account has been opened by the consumer through the mobile app, that person will be able to use mobile payments without having to download each merchant’s individual apps.