Tag: blackberry mobile payments

As the company battles to survive and rebuild its relevance, transactions are the new strategy.

As BlackBerry desperately attempts to remain afloat and recreate itself into a position of relevance in the technology world, this Canadian handset maker is now placing a considerable focus on mobile payments as a new major element of its overall strategy.

While the market is currently clearly dominated by Android and iOS devices, BlackBerry isn’t giving up.

The company has now announced its intentions to become considerably more aggressive in the highly competitive and rapidly moving mobile payments environment. It has also confirmed a new three year agreement in which it has now entered with EnStream LP, which is a smartphone transactions joint venture that is owned by Bell, Rogers, and TELUS, the largest wireless carriers in Canada.

The agreement is to provide a secure mobile payments transaction services platform for Canadian banks and consumers.

This agreement will give EnStream the ability to leverage the infrastructure at BlackBerry in order to be able to give a range of mobile operators and financial institutions the capability to provision sensitive credit and debit card data into any NFC technology enabled smartphone.

BlackBerry released a statement that said that “Today the mobile payments space is primed for growth.” It used data that had been produced by Gartner in order to back this up, showing that it has been predicted that the total value of the transactions that will be completed through the use of smartphone technology will rise from where it had been in 2012, at $35 billion, to reach $173 billion by the close of 2017. That represents a tremendous 31 percent compound annual growth rate.

This forecast also includes the purchase of tickets and merchandise, as well as of bill payments. That said, it does not include airtime top-ups or funds that are sent from person to person.

BlackBerry’s statement went on to further explain its position that “Supporting mobile payments reinforces BlackBerry’s ability to provide unique services that help enterprise customers deploy secure mobile solutions that help promote productivity among their workforce and drive new revenue streams.”

BlackBerry may find the success it needs in the mobile commerce space

BlackBerry has been having a difficult time finding traction in a changing business environment recently. The BlackBerry platform has been failing to attract consumers for some time, largely due to the difficulties associated with competing with Android, iOS, and Windows Phone platforms. In order to remain somewhat relevant, BlackBerry has been focusing more heavily on enterprise services, but this has only provided the company with a modest degree of success. Now, BlackBerry is turning to mobile payments in order to stay afloat.

EnStream and BlackBerry will work to promote mobile commerce among mobile consumers and banks

BlackBerry has entered into a three-year partnership with EnStream, a mobile commerce firm. Together, the two organizations will form a joint venture that will focus on providing secure financial services to consumers and banks. These services will primarily deal in the transfer of credit card information from a mobile device. EnStream will be using BlackBerry’s backend infrastructure in order to allow banks and other organizations to conduct NFC-based mobile transactions.

Mobile commerce competition is quite fierce and BlackBerry may not be able to keep up

The mobile commerce space is currently rife with competition and BlackBerry may find it difficult to keep up with an ever evolving market. There are a large number of mobile commerce firms competition with one another for the attention of consumers, and smaller organizations are being pushed out of the market by their larger counterparts. While BlackBerry has won favor within the enterprise sector, whether or not the platform is suitable for mobile commerce is currently unknown. Enterprise clients may not be willing to use BlackBerry for mobile payments, but other consumers may.

Mobile payments may be BlackBerry’s last and best chance to find success

Mobile commerce may be the last chance for BlackBerry to find success. The company has been facing monumental problems that have been very difficult to overcome in recent years. Without finding some sector in which to thrive, BlackBerry may eventually become something of the past, replaced by other platforms that have managed to find more success with consumers.