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Mobile payments to become mainstream by next year in UK

Rebecca | January 26, 2013

The British authority will enable smartphone and tablet funds transfers among all bank accounts.

The Payments Council in the United Kingdom has announced that the launch of its mobile payments service in 2014 will enable funds transfers among all bank accounts in the country.

Support has already been expressed by Barclays Bank, which will be taking part in the movement.

Barclays Bank has stated that it is in favor of mobile payments, but it will not be alone in providing the service. According to the Payments Council, by the spring of 2014, it will have made it possible for 90 percent of British banks to offer this type of smartphone friendly service.

Customers at Barclays are already using mobile payments through the Pingit app.

This application allows smartphone users to be able to make payments to any bank account in the United Kingdom, provided that the smartphone number of the recipient is on the contact list of the sender.

There are currently eight financial institutions – comprising 90 percent of the current bank accounts in the United Kingdom – which have already made their commitment to offering the new mobile payments service as of the spring of next year. It is expected that they will soon be joined by additional banking institutions, as well. Among those that have already signed up are Barclays, Danske Bank, RBS, HSBC, Cumberland Building Society, Lloyds Banking Group, Metro Bank, and Santander.

There has already been a tremendous adoption of the Pingit app, as the first five days following its release saw over 120,000 downloads. Responding to the considerable demand for using mobile payments, Barclays found itself lowering the minimum age of use from 18 years old, to 16 years old. At the same time, it also increased the transaction value limit.

The Payments Council CEO, Adrian Kamellard, said that “The mobile payments project is a fantastic example of the unique role the Payments Council can play in delivering far-reaching, innovative improvements for customers.” He went on to explain that the newly offered service will provide consumers with a convenient and secure way for sending money to a friend, splitting the bill at a restaurant, or paying a contractor without having to share any bank account details other than a telephone number.

Mobile commerce optimized site from Victoria’s Secret slightly improves

Rebecca | January 24, 2013

Though load time has improved, Keynote Systems points out the need for better successful loading.

Keynote Systems has released its most recent Mobile Commerce Index report, which has revealed that the Victoria’s Secret Direct homepage was only capable of loading successfully at a rate of 97.79 percent.

This has been holding the company back on the index despite its rapid load time.

Last week, the mobile commerce index granted Victoria’s Secret its last possible position out of 30 due to its poor performance. However, this most recent week, which ended on January 20, it rose by nine places to reach the 21 spot. This improvement was almost entirely because of the improvements that were made to the load time on its homepage. Though the percentage of time that the page was able to completely load successfully, it is still far below the average on the index.

Keynote believes that site could still make a number of considerable mobile commerce performance improvements.

In this, Keynote Systems stated that the retailer should focus its attention on improving the mobile commerce site’s ability to successfully load. It did, however, acknowledge the better results when compared to the week before.

The week that ended on January 13 showed that the load time for the Victoria’s Secret homepage was 7.64 seconds. Its success rate was 97.45 percent. When that data was combined into the mobile commerce index at Keynote, it generated a low 391 point score out of 1,000 possible points.

However, during the week ending on January 20, the load time improved to 7.36 seconds, and the successful load rate etched up slightly to 97.79 percent. The result from that data mix on the index gave Victoria’s Secret a mobile commerce score of 719, which was a vast improvement.

Equally, though, while the load time – which is considerably better than the index average of 9.19 seconds – was very positive, it was the percentage of successful loads that held the site back from a significantly higher potential score. Keynote considers 99 percent or better to be the optimal range. The most recent index average was 98.77 percent. This placed Victoria’s Secret’s website far below the mark that should be its mobile commerce site target.