Author: Julie Campbell

The two companies are working together to use a simple QR code based program to pay for purchases.

LevelUp and Nokia have just announced a partnership together that could help to expand the use of mobile payments by consumers, regardless of whether or not they have NFC technology embedded in their devices, as this system is based on the use of QR codes.

This new partnership has had the two companies working together to introduce the service to various cities.

Consumers and businesses in certain American cities are being targeted by Nokia and LevelUp to help to encourage them to use mobile payments for some of the more routine transactions that are being made. The service works when a consumer signs up for the service and links a debit or credit card to the account. Then, when he or she makes a purchase at a participating merchant’s store (where the terminals are available) the app is loaded on the smartphone and a QR code is generated. This is scanned by the terminal and the associated card is billed.

This mobile payments system can also be used to allow consumers to collect loyalty rewards.

According to Matt Kiernan from LevelUp, the mobile payments service is very quick and easy to use. He stated that the average transaction through the service takes about 9 seconds to complete. Comparatively, the average traditional credit card transaction will usually take up to 15 seconds, while a cash transaction averages around 20 seconds.

The two companies in the partnership are hoping to point out that both consumers and businesses can benefit through the use of the service. This is especially true for the combination of the loyalty campaign option into the mobile payments so that the points or rewards can automatically be recorded into the appropriate account.

According to LevelUp, its processing fee has a flat rate of 2 percent, which is lower than the average fee for traditional credit card processing. It also stated that it allows companies to monitor the success of their mobile payments campaigns so that they can see the data related to their spending and activity of their customers. This can help companies to run future campaigns that are better designed to promote specific behaviors among their customers based on past successes.

A recent study has shown that the increased use of networks in India will soon cause the sector to take off.

Though social media marketing is already a tremendous affair in many parts of the world, it has yet to truly take off in India, where the network influence is still considered to be in its infancy.

A recent study has shown that the use of this communication is finally starting to take its first steps in that country.

That being said, it looks like Facebook is and will continue its dominance over social media marketing in the country. A recent report issued by the Internet and Mobile Association of India has revealed that among all users of social media in the country, 97 percent use Facebook. Moreover, the average frequency of use over mobile is every day of the week.

Though this isn’t surprising to many, social media marketing itself has yet to take off there.

These numbers may seem normal for many countries where Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others have already made themselves mainstream, but this is representing a considerable shift from previous years in India, says the founder of Brandologist, Saurabh Parmar, who is also a digital marketing professor.

At the same time, Parmar has questioned the accuracy of previous studies that have been performed regarding social media marketing and the use of the networks as a whole. In this most recent data from the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the data shows that there are 62 million users of social media as a whole in India. However, according to Facebook’s own data – not used in the study – there are 62 million Facebook users.

That would suggest that every single person who is using social media in India is also using Facebook, and it has called the accuracy of the study into doubt.

The study also placed Google+ as the second most popular place for consumers to be exposed to social media marketing. It said that approximately 35 percent of the number of network users are using that platform. However, Naga Chokkanathan pointed out that “If this is true, then this is a surprise. All along we were thinking that social media are dominated by people from big cities, and we have been targeting content, advertisements and offers for them.” Chokkanathan is a social media and customer experience management consultant.

All in all, what could be agreed upon is that there is a great deal of potential for social media marketing in India, and that the surface has only been scratched so far.