Category: Mobile Commerce

Financial institutions becoming more invested in mobile payments

Financial institutions all over the world are becoming more interested in the concept of mobile payments. As consumers become more reliant on their smartphones and tablets, they are looking for new, more convenient ways to make purchases. Nearly everything that consumers do these days has some tie to the mobile world, making it more important for companies, like financial institutions, to cater to the demands of mobile consumers in order to remain relevant in a world that is changing around them.

Royal Bank of Canada takes a swing at mobile commerce

The Royal Bank of Canada has become one of the latest major financial institutions to begin embracing mobile payments. The organization has announced its entry into  the mobile commerce arena this week with the demonstration of a new touch-free transaction system designed for smartphones. The system, which is linked to a new application call Interac, makes use of NFC technology to allow consumers to purchase goods and services. The use of NFC technology allows a smartphone to be used as a payment platform without having to make actual physical contact with anything, as the technology transmits data over a short distance.

NFC continues to worry consumers

NFC technology has been a staple in mobile payments for some time, but many consumers are becoming increasingly wary of the technology. NFC has been linked to several security risks in the past and can be exploited to gain access to a consumer’s financial information. A growing number of companies interested in mobile commerce are choosing to forgo NFC in favor of simple mobile payments applications or, in some cases, the use of QR codes to activate mobile transactions.

Security may not be a problem with Interac application

The Royal Bank of Canada has taken note of the security concerns that consumers have in regards to their financial information and NFC technology. Interac features numerous security measures that are closely tied to the financial institution’s own security systems. The application is considered safe enough to use for mobile payments and if the Royal Bank of Canada can placate the fears of consumers, it may be able to beat out the competition it has in the Canadian mobile commerce sector.

The internet giant is making waves again by offering value tracking efforts to marketers.

As mobile marketing becomes an explosively popular practice, Google has added a new feature for companies to help to gauge the value of their efforts through the addition of its new Calculator tool.

This is a response to the rapidly growing consumer use of smartphones and tablets to interact with businesses.

Now, more than ever, consumers are responding to mobile marketing by using their tablets and smartphones for online searches and interactions with their favorite brands and companies. And this trend is only growing. A recent Nielsen and Google study showed that almost 30 percent of searches over these devices result in a visit to a store by that consumer, a call to a business, or an online purchase.

As business owners work harder on their mobile marketing campaigns, they require more data to judge their success.

These companies are boosting their efforts for mobile marketing to help themselves to get the most out of this growing trend. In this, they need to know how and when those efforts are actually having the desired impact on consumers. Google is now helping those companies with a new tool called The Full Value of Mobile Calculator.

The purpose is to use a few basic benchmarks and equations to help to gauge the value that mobile is having in driving over optimized websites, apps, and other channels. This gives business owners the ability to get a better idea of what is and is not working for them so that they can adjust and polish their mobile marketing campaigns for the potential for considerably improved outcomes.

According to the head of mobile ads marketing at Google, Johanna Werther, “Mobility has forever changed the way consumers live and shop, giving rise to the new consumer paths as the lines between digital and physical experiences blur.” She then added that “Understanding what each of these mobile pathways means for your business is a critical piece of the larger attribution challenge that every marketer needs to meet head-on.” To begin the mobile marketing calculation, information is uploaded by the company, such as sales from the mobile site and in-store sales, either manually or by importing through the already existent Google Adwords account.