Author: Lucy

Mobile wallet from Amdocs targets India’s unbanked

| December 23, 2014

This app has partnered with the State Bank of India in order to reach people without banking access in the country.

The Amdocs mobile wallet app has now entered into a partnership with the State Bank of India for the purpose of reaching the millions of people throughout the country who are unbanked, so that they can have access to digital banking capabilities.

The company has now officially announced its white label solution that targets the underbanked and unbanked populations.

Amdocs provides global customer experience solutions for the telecom industry. It announced that it will be bringing a mobile wallet to the unbanked and underbanked populations of the world. That said, it also made a second announcement, which was of a new partnership that it had opened up with Triotech, the State Bank of India, and Bharat Sanchar Nigram Ltd (the Indian telecom). It has offered its new solution with the intention to be able to reach about 75 million households within the country.

The mobile wallet gives users the ability to complete a range of different types of transaction.

Mobile Wallet App - State Bank of IndiaUsers of the app are able to take part in a broad spectrum of mobile payments and banking capabilities. This includes paying their bills, applying for a microloan, making payments in-store through their debit and credit cards, as well as with prepaid cards.

A significant move by Amdocs that made this new mobile payments and banking solution possible was its acquisition of Utiba, which took place earlier in 2014, and that had already launched its first m-commerce in 2004 in the Philippines.

It is pushing to take part of the massive potential presented by the tremendous unbanked population around the world which, according to the World Bank, is made up of 2.5 billion people. The Amdocs division president of emerging offerings, Patrick McGrory, explained that it is seeing a considerable opportunity to bring together the efforts of telecoms and banks in order to be able to serve that population, particularly as much of the unbanked population of the world also happens to be smartphone owners, making it a potentially perfect fit.

Social media marketing app, Yelp, lets businesses respond to rants and kudos

| December 18, 2014

The latest upgrades to this application make it possible for merchants to tell their side of the story.

The social media marketing app from Yelp has now launched a new version of its application called Yelp for Business Owners, which makes it possible for merchants to be able to more effectively monitor their pages over the service, as well as to reply to the praise and concerns that are posted by their customers.

Many people are actually surprised that this feature didn’t already exist within the mobile app.

Though the consensus appears to be that it is a great idea to use this social media marketing, advertising, and reviewing site and app to be able to give businesses the chance to respond to what customers have said about their products, services, and location, many are also shocked that the option wasn’t already available. This suggests that this move by Yelp isn’t quite as revolutionary as it is simply about time that they did it.

The new social media marketing app for businesses is available for both Android and iOS based devices.

apps - social media marketingThe announcement of the availability of the mobile app was made on the company’s official blog. The release follows closely on the heels of another that had revealed that the service would be allowing anyone to be able to use the Yelp platform in order to communicate directly with a business through its profile, there.

According to Yelp, “Since launching in June of 2014, consumers are now sending an average of 55,000 messages each month to businesses through our free Message the Business tool.” The company also went on to say that mobile represents over 64 percent of the searches that are made over the platform. Moreover, it pointed out that every month, there are about 73 million unique visitors that use the service over their smartphones and tablets, as of the third quarter of this year.

The social media marketing, reference, and reviewing service shared that “it’s clear there’s a demand to conduct these conversations on the go.” This is becoming the case with an increasing number of services that provide consumers with business locations, details, and reviews.