Tag: mobile wallet

Mobile commerce experts expect an increase of $14 billion this year

| January 25, 2013

Mobile Commerce Sephora

The example of Sephora has been used to support this claim about the channel.

Experts in mobile commerce and marketing have been looking at some of the larger players in the channel and have stated that they expect a positive future for shopping over smartphones.

Those in the industry are increasingly convinced that this environment has become vital to a company’s survival.

Johnna Marcus, an executive from Sephora, the beauty product retailer, explained that mobile commerce had been a highly positive experience for that company, and that it anticipates further gains in that sphere will present themselves in 2013. Based on last year’s numbers, that business is justified in feeling positive about the potential from smartphone shoppers.

When speaking at a conference, the executive revealed considerable mobile commerce growth data.

According to Marcus, Sephora saw an increase in orders over mobile commerce of 167 percent. Moreover, there was a spike of 75 percent in the traffic that the site saw from smartphones and tablets. Furthermore, over 50 percent of the emails that are sent by the company are opened using these devices, as opposed to laptops and desktop computers.

Sephora has developed a unique mobile commerce strategy which is attempting to make the smartphone or tablet into a type of digital personal shopper for consumers. The devices will allow them to keep track of the brands that they prefer, read reviews, and keep an eye on the very latest items.

The company has also placed a considerable amount of focus on the concept of a mobile wallet which will integrate with the gift cards that they sell. Beyond that, there is a handy feature in the company’s app, which allows consumers to scan the barcodes on the packages in-store, or on the items that have already been purchased. This provides immediate access to product information, reviews, and options for purchasing that item online.

Of course, this was only one example of mobile commerce successes over the last year. A recent eMarketer study has indicated that this year, consumers will be using their devices to purchase $37.44 billion worth of retail products. This is a massive increase over last year, when $23.72 billion was spent.

Mobile payments and digital wallets launched by Telefónica Deutschland

| January 23, 2013

Smartphone to Smartphone Mobile PaymentsThe company has announced a number of smartphone friendly transaction services.

Telefónica’s German international wireless carrier brand, called Telefónica Deutschland, has just announced that it will launch a new smartphone-to smartphone direct money transfer and service as well as mobile payments wallet service.

The goal of the company is to propel the world forward toward a cashless society.

According to the Telefónica Germany CEO, René Schuster, “Soon, children will only know from history books what a wallet and hard cash are.” He added that “Mobile payment with your smartphone has arrived in Germany. Our customers will soon be transferring money mobile-to-mobile and paying in shops using their digital wallet.”

The new peer to peer service will be the first of the mobile payments services that are launched.

This will occur in February by way of a wireless carrier. This element of the mobile payments offerings will be called mpass. By using mpass, smartphone users will be able to make money transfers to other mpass accounts in real time. All the sender will need to know about the recipient is her or her cell phone number. The company has stated that the process is very user friendly and is a free service.

The app to use mpass will be made available to users of devices based on both iOS and Android operating systems. It will require a one-time registration the first time that the service is activated, but the information will be saved after that point so that it does not need to be re-entered.

Beyond the initial mobile payments launch of the P2P service, Telefónica Deutschland has said that it will also offer consumers their O2 Wallet. This is a smartphone wallet that will function using NFC technology in order to allow contactless transactions to occur at a participating merchant’s point of sale. This service will use the PayPass technology from MasterCard in order to provide secure credentials confirmation and payment data from the NFC chip equipped smartphone to the reader device at the register.

Telefónica Deutschland consumers will be sent a new free NFC pack that includes an NFC SIM card so that they will be able to download the app, register, and use these mobile payments and wallet services.