Author: Rebecca

New report shows the number of users to use this form of mobile payments will almost triple by 2017.

A recent Juniper Research study indicates that there could be as many as 300 million consumers worldwide who will make mobile contactless payments by the year 2017, which is a huge increase from the slightly more than 110 million that utilized this mobile payment service in 2013.

Contactless card rollouts are gaining momentum in many countries across the globe.

According to the study, several markets may soon be adopting contactless payments for mobile due to the success and popularity of contactless debit and credit cards. In addition, the introduction of contactless cards also lead to an increase in Point of Sale (POS) terminals equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC). It has now become standard for leading POS vendors like Ingenico and VeriFone to ship most of their terminals with NFC.

However, the research director and author of the report, Windsor Holden, stated that stakeholders need to work on their efforts to increase awareness among consumers regarding mobile contactless payments. Furthermore, he said the value proposition also needs to be taught to retailers. Holden commented that contactless payment technology is mainly “being sold to retailers on the basis of faster throughput at the POS. The other critical opportunities offered by contactless – such as consumer engagement and product upselling – are much lower on their radar.”

The cost of mobile contactless payments cards is higher than plastic cards.

The Juniper study also noted that NFC rollouts have been held back due to the lack of a clear business model. Currently, it costs more to issue a mobile payment card than it does a plastic card.

In addition, it is likely that the mobile contactless payments market will receive a significant boost from the expected launch of Apple’s iWallet service. That being said, currently, it is not clear if extra POS upgrades will be necessary once the service is launched. Moreover, it has not been officially confirmed that Apple will be releasing a mobile payments service or that it will feature NFC technology. This isn’t the first time NFC rumors have been linked to Apple, but nothing has ever come of these rumors.

The company has already achieved successes with customers over smartphones, and now it is moving into glasses.

After having successfully accumulated a massive audience of smartphone users to use augmented reality apps in order to engage with products in the real world, Blippar has now released a platform designed for Google Glass.

The Blippar platform for Google Glass was created with developers in mind in mobile game creation.

This platform is meant to provide developers with a new way to create their own augmented reality mobile games. Blippar’s chief executive, Ambarisha Mitra, first revealed the Games for Glass platform at an AR trade show in Santa Clara, California, called the Augmented World Expo. The games would activate when looking at something in the real world while using Glass to be able to interact with it. The example that was given was in the form of a can of Pepsi.

The platform allows an ad on a real world product to provide an augmented reality game experience.

When the Glass was aimed at the soda can with a soccer ad that was Blippar enabled, an app activated and then the wearer could use his or her eyes to aim the soccer ball at the goal and then kick it. The idea is to use an ad created in the physical world to provide the device user with an interactive digital AR experience.

Blippar intends to release its Games for Glass software development kit (SDK) in just under a month and a half. Then, developers will be able to use it to create a larger number of games that will take advantage of the Google Glass experience and its unique ability to use virtual image overlays on the view of the real world.

For example, it could allow someone to add virtual paint to a real world object. Then, when another Glass wearer who uses the Blippar augmented reality app happens to see that object, they would also be able to spot the new color or design that was added by the original person. Mitra explained that through this technology “we can become the bridge from physical to digital.”