The channel is booming as brands and companies discover that consumers are buying over their devices.
The latest figures have now been released from the e-Retail Sales Index from IMGR Capgemini, which has revealed that their mobile commerce index is continuing a rapid rise as retailers continue to catch on.
The massive year over year and month over month growth is being credited to retailer adoption.
The report from the latest index indicated a 136 percent growth when June of this year was compared to that of last year, and when May was compared to June this year, an 8 percent growth was recorded. Conversion rates had also experienced a considerable increase, which would prove highly appealing to retailers.
Mobile commerce conversion rates rose massively from 1.27 percent in June 2012 to 2.03 percent this year.
At the same time, retailers are seeing that the spending rates and conversion rates over the tablet mobile commerce channel are approaching those of desktops. This is an opportunity that many of them are refusing to ignore. Even specific sectors are showing promising growth, causing the companies in those areas to get on board.
In the U.K, clothing sales over mobile commerce saw a year over year growth in June of 29 percent, as summer wardrobe updates were made at the start of the season. Even more promising was the area of home and garden products, which saw a year over year growth of 35 percent in the same month as the winter was left long behind and landscaping, gardening, and home reno projects got started. Even travel rose over this channel as summer vacations were planned, with a year over year growth of 15 percent and a 4 percent month over month rise.
According to the Capgemini vice president and head of retail consulting and technology, Chris Webster, as consumer confidence continues to grow in mobile commerce and purchasing with their tablets and smartphones, the index is remaining very strong. The findings from their analysis is only underscoring existing evidence that wireless technologies have brought a great deal to the doorstep of the retail sector, and those companies are not failing to take hold.
The joint venture between Monitise and Visa has started a strategic deal with the Indian bank.
A new mobile commerce and smartphone payments partnership has now been announced between ICICI Bank from India, and the Visa and Monitise 50/50 joint venture in the country called Movida.
The largest private sector bank and the joint venture signed the agreement for smartphone friendly offerings.
Through this new partnership, ICICI bank intends to make new mobile commerce and payments offerings in a deal that has been compared to the one that occurred in 2012 between the same platform, Movida, and HDFC Bank, the second largest one in India’s private sector.
This will give ICICI’s customers the chance to take advantage of some of the potential of mobile commerce.
Some of the mobile commerce offerings that the Movida platform will provide to ICICI customers include the ability to pay their bills, purchase movie tickets, and recharge their prepaid wireless accounts from their smartphones at any time, no matter where they are.
The Movida platform can be accessed through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology that is currently available in a number of different language (which is important considering the diversity in languages in India) or through the menu-based Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) GSM mobile protocol technology. The hope is that by providing these different mobile commerce options for access, it will help to maximize the number of consumers who will have the appropriate smartphone technology to use it.
ICICI Bank plans to roll out its new mobile commerce options later on in this quarter. It will be available to its payment card holders and will function across all of the different wireless networks through any payment credit card, including Visa, MasterCard, and a range of others.
In order to use the new mobile commerce feature, cardholders will need to link their card of choice to their smartphone number, which has been registered with ICICI Bank. They will then be able to make a payment through Movida’s secured connection. The card data is secured through the use of a unique, customer selected PIN which will be entered at each use.