Tag: mobile payments

Telefonica launches new venture to promote mobile commerce in Spain

Telefonica, a leading Spanish telecommunications company, has announced a new partnership with CaixaBank and Santander in order to create a joint venture that aims to develop a new mobile banking solution that include launching a mobile wallet service for consumers. Mobile commerce has been showing strong growth throughout Europe, leading many telecommunications companies to make their way into this space in order to meet the changing needs of consumers. Banks have also been taking note of this trend and have been following in the footsteps of telecommunications companies.

Joint venture may be the largest of its kind in Europe

Telefonica claims that its new joint venture is the largest of its kind in Europe and suggests that the endeavor will help make mobile commerce more common in Spain. The initial stages of the joint venture are meant to target more than 600,000 businesses in Spain, offering these businesses various mobile commerce services that will allow them to engage consumers in a more dynamic way. The joint venture will eventually see international expansion as it becomes more popular.

Mobile wallets are gaining consumer support

The mobile wallet associated with the joint venture will serve as a platform to allow consumers to make mobile payments for goods and services. It will also facilitate person-to-person money transfers. Mobile wallets have been growing in popularity among consumers as they offer a convenient way to store and use financial information without having to deal with a variety of plastic cards or cash. While mobile wallets have been met with modest interest in the U.S., European consumers have proven to be more accommodating of these applications.

Telefonica continues to support mobile commerce

Telefonica has experience in the field of mobile commerce and CaixaBank and Santander are not the first banks to partner with the telecommunications company in this field. Telefonica has been one of the chief supporters of mobile commerce in Spain for the past few years and has been working aggressively with many banks and financial service institutions to develop convenient platforms for consumers.

Gartner has just released research that suggests that the adoption of the technology has held back growth in other areas.

Though money transfers have been booming over mobile, Gartner has just published the results of its latest research which have indicated that the adoption of NFC technology has been adequately poor that it is actually holding back the growth of smartphone based payments around the globe.

They have, however, predicted that mobile money transfers will continue their growth at least through 2017.

Though technology and banking giants had had very high hopes for tap-and-pay and contactless payments over smartphones, when all is said and done, NFC technology has proven to be nothing more than a disappointment over the last while and, according to the report, has hindered the growth of the overall mobile payments market worldwide. At the same time, the report also indicates that there are still some bright spots and there is still some potential for future use by consumers.

The Gartner report said that NFC technology tremendously held back the value of transactions over smartphones.

Gartner explained that due to NFC technology, the value of transactions completed via smartphone “has been reduced by more than 40 percent throughout the forecast period due to disappointing adoption of NFC technology in all markets in 2012 and the fact that some high-profile services, such as Google Wallet and Isis, are struggling to gain traction.”

The forecasts that Gartner is now making state that NFC technology will now make up only 2 percent of the total transaction value for mobile payments this year and that by 2017, it will represent only 5 percent of the total. It does see that there is the potential for faster growth in 2016 when there is greater penetration of enabled smartphones and contactless readers.

What does seem evident to the company’s analysts as well as to other observers in the industry is that the greatly hyped NFC technology will not be revolutionizing mobile payments as had once been the general belief. It has been facing far too many struggles on a great number of levels both from the side of the devices and the payment terminals to take off at any time in the very near future.