Windows Phone users will be able to make mobile transactions thanks to Softcard
People with Windows Phones will now be able to make mobile payments thanks to a new application from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. The new Softcard app was released for Windows Phone last week, giving the platform one of its first mobile wallets that is supported by a wide range of retail companies. Softcard, formerly known as ISIS, is a mobile payment company that has been growing in popularity for some time, offering consumers an effective mobile wallet with a wide range of features.
Softcard offers to store consumer information to make transactions more convenient
Using Softcard, a consumer can store their financial information on a mobile device. They can also use the Softcard application to store information from retailers regarding loyalty programs and special offers. The app also facilitates mobile payments, using NFC technology to accomplish this task. In order to make a payment, however, a merchant must also support NFC technology, as well as the mobile wallet itself.
200,000 retailers in the US support Softcard
Some 200,000 retailers throughout the U.S. currently accept mobile transactions from Softcard and other NFC-based payment services. These retailers have adopted NFC-enabled point-of-sale systems that allow people to purchase products using their smartphones rather than credit and debit cards or physical currency. Softcard currently only works with a limited number of credit cards as well, supporting American Express, Wells Fargo, and Chase cards.
New mobile commerce services may be coming to the Windows Phone in the future
Windows Phone users have had very limited options in the mobile commerce space in the past. There are few applications currently available for the platform that are capable of facilitating mobile transactions, leaving Windows Phone users somewhat on the fringe of the mobile commerce space. Softcard is one of the first big name services that has come to the Windows Phone operating system, but it may not be the last. Windows Phone users may be in the minority when it comes to mobile consumers, but the demand for mobile commerce services among this demographic is quite high and growing quickly.
Nextbit has developed a new service that enables Android users to store and sync all of their mobile data online.
What makes this particular mobile technology unique is that it also allows users to store and sync the state of the actual apps, which means that if a user was working on a photo that was only half edited or they were in the middle of game, they can pick up right where they left off when switching from a smartphone to a tablet or vice-versa.
Users can instantly move a project, task or game to a device that is nearby.
The service that has been developed by the startup, which is comprised of a team of people who come from Google, Apple, Amazon and Dropbox, is called “Baton”. The service from Nextbit is also equipped with a feature known as “Pass”. This lets users instantly switch whatever app they are working with to a nearby device, waking the device from sleep mode and immediately launching the app on it at the same state, right where a user left off.
In other words, Baton is a system-level service that essentially gives Android users the ability to hit “pause” on any app they are using and send the app in this paused state to another device where the user can then resume whatever they were doing before making the switch.
Mike Chan, former Google alumni and the co-found and CTO of Nextbit said “We live in a multi-device world, and yet it’s still too cumbersome to switch between our devices.” He added that they have “taken the cloud and deeply integrated it into the Android operating system itself to provide a seamless experience between your phone and your tablet without any effort from developers.” Chan explained the service during a recent demo the company gave at the Code/Mobile conference in California.
The mobile technology does not require app developers to do anything for it to work.
Baton is not unlike Apple’s Handoff feature that has been included in the company’s most recent desktop and mobile operating systems, which allows users to switch tasks between their different iOS devices. However, the major downside with Handoff is it requires app developers to add it into their applications, which not all developers have done. Therefore, it doesn’t always work.
Nextbit, on the other hand, does not require developers to support its mobile technology or even know that it is there. Baton has been designed to remove the steps of finding the app and the proper files when the user switches their task between devices.
