Tag: mobile payments service

Mobile payments and data race may currently have PayPal in the lead

| May 1, 2013

PayPal mobile payments may be the leaderAt the moment, in terms of merchants and consumers, the company may be considered the leader.

PayPal, already a leader in the online transaction industry, is starting to be considered to be the frontrunner in mobile payments, as well, as it boasts the largest estimated number of merchants and consumers within a “digital wallet” sphere.

Furthermore, the company is aiming to expand this possible lead with the addition of new partnerships.

PayPal has just announced that it is partnering with Discover and NCR in order to further boost its mobile payments offerings. The eBay owned company has been a leader in online purchases for fifteen years, but were able to process more than $14 billion in transactions over tablets and smartphones last year.

The PayPal Here mobile payments service has allowed the company to define itself in this channel.

The success that PayPal has had over mobile payments has been considerable enough that they feel that they are starting to chip into the transaction processing sector, which has long been held by major credit card companies. This has also allowed consumers to start to be able to pay for their purchases in a seamless way, using their cards, but without having to actually carry the plastic.

The PayPal Here mobile payments card reader is also rapidly becoming popular among small businesses. This is because it allows those companies to use any smartphone or table to have a small card reader plugged into its audio jack without the need for large POS equipment or its associated rental or purchase fees.

Now that the Discover partnership has been added to PayPal’s growing set of deals, it will mean that the company will be expanding to 2 million more brand name locations by the end of this year.

That said, one of the mobile payments company’s primary goals is to eliminate the need for a card reader altogether so that the app can be used on consumer smartphones in order to replace the plastic cards. Though this service is available at a few thousand stores already, the extra two million will exponentially grow this opportunity.

Mobile payments service from Visa is getting bigger

| April 23, 2013

Visa Mobile Payments EuropeThe credit card giant has broadened its offerings in Europe with two new features.

Visa Europe has just announced that it is adding two new features to its mobile payments offerings, with the addition of Immediate Payments and Multi Currency.

These two new features are meant to make the service more convenient and appealing to users.

These services will make it possible for the mobile payments program from Visa to let users make transactions instantly from their smartphones to any other Visa cardholder on the European continent. That will provide a number of benefits, says Visa, to both the sender and the recipient of the funds.

Visa has stated that these two new mobile payments features will become available before the end of 2013.

The purpose of the Multi Currency mobile payments features, explained Visa, was to make it possible to simplify a process that they called expensive and complex, when it comes to being able to send and receive money over the borders of the various countries throughout Europe.

At the same time, the Immediate Payments feature has already become available within the United Kingdom. This mobile payments option will expand throughout other European markets as the year progresses. It is meant to give consumers the chance to be able to receive funds that are sent through Visa Personal Payments within a span of minutes, instead of having to wait for a much longer and drawn out transaction process.

To be able to take advantage of this mobile payments service, consumers will need register and will need to know both the mobile number and the Visa credit card number of the funds recipient.

According to Sandra Alzetta, the senior vice president of Visa Europe, when discussing the industry and these new additions, “Mobile payments have the potential to fundamentally change the way that people pay and are paid. The new Multi Currency and Immediate Payments features combine the convenience of mobile device use with the ability to send money to 460 million Visa cardholders across Europe, solving a problem that millions of consumers face every day – giving money to another individual easily and securely.”