Category: Mobile Commerce

Visa and Monitise extend mobile payments partnership

Visa has announced that it is expanding its partnership with Monitise, a mobile payments company. The two companies have been working to expand the reach of mobile commerce throughout Europe and have been met with promising success thus far. Visa now aims to extend its partnership with Monitise through a new three-year commercial agreement. Per the agreement, the two companies will continue expanding into the European mobile commerce market, developing new mobile payments solutions that are designed with financial institutions in mind.

Mobile commerce is growing more popular among financial groups due to consumer demand

Mobile payments have been a relatively easy sell to consumers. Many people have shown  their willingness to use their smartphones and tablets to purchase goods and services. The concept has been more difficult to sell to financial institutions, which are more concerned with the risks associated with mobile commerce rather than its convenience. Despite these concerns and a reluctance to support mobile commerce, many European financial institutions are seeing rising demand from customers concerning mobile payments. Thus, these organizations are beginning to take steps to accommodate the wants of their customers.

New solutions to be introduced to European market

Through the agreements, Visa will be able to make use of mobile technology developed by Monitise. This technology will be put to use in the development of new mobile payments solutions. As these solutions take form, Visa will help promote them to European markets as well as help ensure that these solutions are secure against the threats that exist in the mobile world. Visa and Monitise have already deployed mobile payments services to more than 3,000 banks and financial institutions in Europe and the two companies are expected to look to take advantage of this momentum.

Visa and Monitise seek to dominate Europe with mobile payments

Visa notes that the way people pay for goods and services is changing. More people have access to smartphones and tablets than ever before and these consumers are finding that mobile commerce offers them a convenient and safe way to make purchases. Visa and Monitise will work to continue establishing their commanding presence in the European market, hoping to fortify themselves against competing parties that are looking to do the same.

The industry is now wondering if the social networking giant has finally mastered this channel.

Facebook has been the recipient of massive criticisms due to its lack of mobile marketing revenues, which had lead to its exceptionally disappointing initial public offering (IPO) stock nearly a year ago.

At that time, there were hundreds of millions of users accessing the service without ads on smartphones and tablets.

Investors were disappointed that mobile marketing had apparently been ignored by Facebook, when it could have been used to reach these millions upon millions of people, but it was not. What has since been discovered, is that the executives at the social networking giant were perfectly aware of this trend and they were already well on the way to building their strategy.

The Sponsored Stories mobile marketing social ads were only the tip of the iceberg.

That element had only just been introduced at the time of the IPO, but what the investors didn’t know at that time – and what has only recently been revealed – is that Facebook had a great deal more up its sleeves for its mobile marketing programs. It took several months, but it has now been proving itself capable of exposing ads to the smartphone and tablet using masses in compelling and effective ways. This was far beyond what most people at that time could have predicted.

The mobile marketing ads at Facebook were not an instant success, but they did gradually build traction until they were earning $305 million by the fourth quarter. This represented approximately 23 percent of the overall ad sales revenue for the company. It is also one of the main reasons that the social network stock price has nearly doubled the low to which it plummeted shortly after the IPO, hovering near the $30 mark.

One of the main reasons that the ads in the Facebook mobile marketing strategy are considered to be successful is that they aren’t the same as those that are used on the desktop site. On the standard website, the ads run along the right hand side of the page. Instead, the smartphone friendly ads are worked right into the news feed and have both a look and a feel that are comparable to the posts that are made by their friends and the other brands and pages that they have liked.