This trend is heading around the world as Diwali shopping in India broke mobile records.
While the holiday shopping season is only just getting started in the United States, India has already had a major wave of its own m-commerce season as Diwali brought a tremendous number of shoppers to their device screens to pick up that perfect gift.
According to UCWeb, the holiday shopping traffic across India broke the 75.5 percent mark this year.
UCWeb is the company behind the top mobile browser used in India, as it holds onto a market share that is greater than 54 percent in that country. This makes that company uniquely able to understand the increases that are being seen in m-commerce activities throughout the year and at times of holiday shopping such as during Diwali.
According to the company’s managing director in India, Kenny Ye, “The numbers of users who visit Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal via UC Browser in the month leading up to Diwali 2015 increased over 75 percent compared with last year.”
People in India are steadily increasing their use of m-commerce, particularly during festive seasons.
Ye went on to explain that consumers in India are “embracing shopping on the go” to a growing degree. They are finding that there is a great deal of opportunity available to take advantage of the time they have while they commute or on lunch breaks, for example, in order to pick up the gifts they need for festive celebrations. It helps them to save time and to be able to find some great ways to save money on what they want to buy.
That said, this use of mobile commerce for Diwali in India has been met with some resistance in that many people are saying that it is pushing people to think of this important time on the calendar in an exclusively commercial sense, when it is supposed to mean a great deal more.
This closely mirrors the sentiment of many people who will be using m-commerce to help them to get ahead in their Christmas shopping during the holiday season in the United States. It will be interesting to see what other trends follow the same paths between the two countries and their top gift giving holidays.
The MasterCard service is now going to add in-application purchases to its offerings.
MasterCard has just announced that its MasterPass mobile payments wallet will be available for making in-app purchases as well as the already existent option for merchants to embed the transaction type into their e- and mcommerce websites.
This announcement was made by the credit card giant in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress.
Among the very first to use this new in-app mobile payments opportunity from MasterCard are Major League Baseball and Starbucks Australia. By bringing the smartphone wallet to applications, the company is acknowledging that consumers are shopping with their favorite retailers through branded retail apps on an increasing basis. This is the case whether those shoppers are on the go or actually within the store, itself.
As MasterCard recognized this trend, it only made sense to ensure that its mobile payments were compatible with it.
The senior vice president and group head, U.S. emerging payments lead at MasterCard, Purchase, New York, Mario Shiliashki, explained that as a growing number of consumers shop at retailer locations by way of mobile apps or with applications and browsers combined, it has been very important for the company’s offerings to adapt. He added that it is common for smartphone using consumers to find the experience from a dedicated app to be more appealing.
Therefore, by allowing MasterPass transactions to be available in stores, on websites, and in apps, Shiliashki feels that it will help to enhance the complete shopping experience. Providing compatibility with its mobile wallet in applications means that consumers will be able to choose the experience that they feel is the most appealing, relevant, and appropriate for their own needs. He also stated that it has allowed the company to bring the online and in store experience closer together.
The appeal for consumers to choose mobile payments through MasterPass instead of paying with credit cards and other means through each individual retail application is that it allows a transaction to be securely completed from one wallet, without having to provide payment data with numerous different merchant application providers.
