Tag: mobile payments

Smartphone users have a wealth of information available to them by scanning QR codes on products and in advertisements, and will now be able to make charitable donations through the same format.

QR codes to aid 6,000 charities

The start-up Paystik has launched a campaign to raise charitable donations for over 6,000 charities using the QR code as a means to make quick and easy payments when consumers wish to donate to a charity of their choosing. The goal is to use QR codes for easy payments to both charities and small businesses. Both can sign on with Paystik to produce QR codes, thus reducing problems with billing and advertising.

The result will be an app for smartphones, allowing consumers to send quick and easy payments. Project C.U.R.E. will begin a campaign this week with direct mail. Last year, this organization reached out to consumers for charitable donations over the holidays and supplied over $40 million in medical care and supplies around the world. This campaign will be aimed at merchants this year.

QR codes gaining in US

The US has been a hard sell for mainstream use of QR code for payments. Companies like Paypal, DigiMo, Qriket, and Doxo have been accepting payments through QR, though none have become a huge success in that category. It is thought that smartphone saturation in the US could see a change in that regard, with smartphone use steadily on the rise. Still, a QR code is often a hard sell in the US. Some consumers are still not sure what their purpose is and are not aware of how to use the technology.

Co-founder James Ioannidis said, “Obviously, the first time is the hardest. But after on-boarding them, we see consumers making repeat transactions.” He went on to explain that he feels aiding charities will bring Paystik success where other campaigns featuring QR code have faltered. The biggest obstacle is getting the consumer aware of the code and to also download the app.

About Paystik

The company of New Stanford is a three-person operation based in Stanford Venture Studio at the Graduate School of Business. At the present time, the company is bootstrapped, meaning they have no outside investment. Ioannidis is a former program manager with Microsoft.

Though there were a number of missteps throughout 2012, many believe 2013 will turn things around.

Last year, many of the players in the mobile payments industry had expected the use of smartphone wallets and similar services to take off, but the actual figures fell far short of the mark.

This year, experts in the industry believe that 2013 will represent a major turnaround in this area.

That said, the experts don’t believe that it will be Google, Isis, and the other joint venture mobile payments wallets that will take off this year. Instead, the attention is turning toward the banks that have been lining up to make their own way into the world of smartphone transactions.

This opinion is shared among a panel of 200 mobile payments industry experts.

This panel is made up of industry executives, insiders, and developers, who all share the belief that 2013 will be the year that is the most compelling for consumer mobile payments applications. They also stated that social networking and location apps will play an important role in the industry as a whole.

The results of a recently conducted survey by Chetan Sharma Consulting have shown that mobile payments and mcommerce will not only take off, but the power behind them will not be the traditional internet players. Instead, it will be the traditional financial companies.

According to the participants in the survey, they feel that Google, carriers, and the various popular new startups such as Square have had their chance to appeal to consumers and make it big, but that as a whole, they failed to make the impact that they had been hoping to make. Instead, it is the turn of the large credit card companies (such as Visa and MasterCard) and the banks and other established financial companies (such as PayPal) to step in and clean up the damage that was left behind.

It is those companies, said the survey participants, who will make the largest difference in mobile payments, and that will offer consumers the mobile security level and the type of services that they have been waiting to see before taking part.