Paym, a new mobile commerce platform, was recently launched in the United Kingdom and represents one of the most highly anticipated mobile services to be released in the country so far this year. The platform is backed by many of the United Kingdom’s largest financial institutions and this has allowed it to find early success where other, similar mobile commerce platforms have struggled to find traction with consumers. Paym’s ambition is to reach a significant user base by the end of the year in order to solidify its place as a leading platform in the mobile space, and it is already well on its way to achieving this goal.
Commerce platform already boasts of more than 7 million registered users
The service currently boasts of some 500,000 registered users through the nine banks that have partnered with Paym. These banks boast of a large pool of customers that are already making payments through Paym. The platform is specifically designed as a person-to-person payments service and has managed to acquire strong support from consumers as such. The Paym service is integrated into the mobile applications that are associated with its partnered banks and other organizations.
Platform manages to find favor with consumers despite crowded market
The platform has received an overwhelming positive response from consumers in the short time after its release. This has provided the platform with the momentum it needs to compete against other services that exist in the mobile commerce sector. Both PayPal and Google have managed to establish a formidable presence when it comes to mobile payments, but these two companies are far from being considered the default mobile commerce service providers among consumers. Indeed, many people are happy to make use of a wide variety of mobile commerce services, moving from one service to the next as they see fit.
Small firms fight for the attention of consumers
As mobile shopping continues to grow in popularity in the United Kingdom, it is likely that the market will continue to be flooded with new and ambitious mobile services. These services will compete with one another and likely die out due to a lack of exposure. Large organizations, such as PayPal, are able to avoid much of this competition because of their built-in user base, but smaller organizations will have to fight hard for the attention of consumers.
The latest services from the companies have been unveiled for use by the retail marketplace.
VeriFone Systems Inc. and The Pinnacle Corp. have both announced their launches of brand new mobile payments solutions for the retail market space, at a time when these unveilings are being made with increasing speed by various entrants to this ecosystem.
This new point of sale service is a part of the partnership that has been made with the National Payment Card Association.
Pinnacle is an automated technology provider for the petroleum and convenience store industries. It entered into a partnership with the National Payment Card Association (NPCA) in order to be able to launch the Pinnacle Palm POS mobile payments service. The solution is designed to give retailers an app that has been customized with their own branding and that will permit consumers who use it to use their smartphones to make purchase transactions instead of a debit or credit card.
This mobile payments solution uses a very simple strategy for its card authorization.
The design of the system means that the mobile payments user will not need to share his or her personal data across a network. Moreover, it also means that the existing infrastructure for the retailer will not need to be changed, said Pinnacle. The Palm POS smartphone transaction service will broaden the partnership between the company and the NPCA for six years.
According to Drew Mize, the chief operating officer from Pinnacle “We are very excited about the launch of our mobile payments strategy, leveraging our existing and successful partnership with NPCA of many years and their portfolio of intellectual property.” He went on to say that they are providing a solution that is outside of PCI’s scope, which “is based on the foundation of standards that is being evaluated by PCATS; and designed to support both outside and inside payments, this solution has potential for rapid deployment by any retailer using Palm POS.”
The NPCA is now offering the mobile payments through Palm POS to users of both Android and iOS based smartphones. At the same time, VeriFone has announced its own portable, countertop, and smartphone transaction systems.
