Two major players in smartphone transactions have teamed up to boost the market – MasterCard and Weve.
MasterCard and Weve have now come together in a partnership that is designed to help the mobile payments market to clean itself up, smooth itself out and become considerably more appealing to merchants and consumers alike.
The scattered and inconsistent nature of the market is a major factor that is holding back the adoption of the tech.
This new mobile payments partnership is made up of credit card giant, MasterCard, and Weve, which is a joint venture comprising of the three largest mobile operators in the United Kingdom: O2, Vodafone UK, and EE. They will be working together to develop something altogether new and that will hopefully do what the market has failed to be able to provide until now.
They have described their goal of creating the U.K.’s “most comprehensive contactless mobile payments system.”
This is meant to help to create a contactless system for paying for products and services through the use of their smartphones and mobile devices, in a way that will be simple and convenient for consumers to use, while being cheaper to manage for banks. The role that MasterCard has taken on is to provide the system with the integration services and the technology to make it possible for financial institutions such as banks to be able to step into the payment platform from Weve.
Weve’s CEO, David Sear, said that this contactless transaction technology in the form of credit and debit cards has been taking off in the United Kingdom. He explained that there are currently 36 million people in the U.K. who are using this type of card, and that more than 300,000 retailers there are able to process this type of transaction.
Equally, he admits that paying over mobile devices using similar technology is “a bit of a mess”. He stated that it “may sound harsh, but it’s inescapably true; to date, the industry has created a level of discussion and confusion driven by a multitude of announcements that actually haven’t delivered mobile payments systems that works the way that consumers want and need them to.”
Leaked documents suggest that Twitter is looking to establish itself in mobile shopping
Twitter may be preparing to jump into the mobile commerce game. According to leaked documents obtained by the UK Telegraph, the social network may soon make it possible for its 232 million users to purchase products directly from their mobile devices. The documents suggest that the service would be called Twitter Commerce, but there are not indications when this service would be made available for certain. Moreover, the leaked documents cannot necessarily be considered accurate and they could be nothing more than simple rumors.
Documents imply that Twitter has partnered with Fancy
The leaked documents suggest that the social network’s mobile commerce endeavors will come to fruition through a partnership with Fancy, an e-commerce merchant. Fancy counts Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, as one of its prominent investors and board members. While this does not indicate Twitter’s absolute interest in mobile shopping, it does help establish a solid connection between the social network and Fancy. The leaked documents show mock-ups concerning how Twitter users would purchase products directly from product tweets that include a button that says “buy with Fancy.”
Twitter retains a strong focus on the mobile sector
Twitter has a strong interest in the mobile sector, but not necessarily commerce. The social network has done little in the way of directly supporting mobile payments and shopping, but Twitter has been working on ways to monetize its mobile interests. Facebook recently discovered the benefits of mobile commerce and how to integrate mobile shopping into its network and Twitter may soon follow suit. Indeed, this may be the beginning of a new trend in social media, wherein social networks begin to play a bigger role in the commerce space.
Mobile competition is already fierce
While Twitter may show an interest in mobile commerce, it will have to find a way to compete with organizations that already have a strong presence in that sector. The commerce space is awash with competition from various small firms and some large companies, including Google. Apple is rumored to be looking to enter into the mobile commerce space as well, which will add further competition to the crowded field.
