Tag: smartphone payments

Mobile marketing and payments to merge through CheckAlt

| March 25, 2013

Mobile Marketing Mobile Payments PartnershipThe partnership that the company has made with Mobivity has allowed the two services to be combined.

Mobivity Holdings Corp – a mobile marketing technology provider – has entered into a new partnership along with CheckAlt in order to create a new smartphone friendly check acceptance app for local businesses.

The hope is to create a single solution that will combine these two powerful areas of smartphone use.

The two companies will be combining their strengths and the technology that they are already using in order to provide local merchants with a solution that could potentially make transactions much easier and convenient for them to accept.

This new app would bring together mobile marketing and smartphone payment solutions into one service.

It would combine the current smartphone app by the mobile marketing company with the eCheck technology from CheckAlt so that smartphone payments solutions could also be provided within it.

According to Dennis Becker, the president and CEO of Mobivity, “While Mobivity continues to build marketing relationships between mobile consumers and local merchants, our vision is to evolve that mobile marketing conversation to a payment transaction.”

The technology for check processing from CheckAlt brings together the company’s eCheck processing platform with remote deposit capture in orde to be able to manage digital transactions. That company will be combining its capabilities with the mobile marketing platform at Mobivity so that new products such as SMS text messaging payments and apps with new transaction options will become possible through the marketing relationships that have already been formed, said the two companies in this new partnership.

CEO and president of CheckAlt, Shai Stern, explained that when a consumer makes a payment to a merchant, it is essentially a combination of some type of loyalty or marketing relationship. Therefore, his company believes that by working with Mobivity to reach thousands of local businesses, it will assist in mobile marketing to millions of consumers across the country and generating a massive network that could be among the largest in the industry. This is could be possible due to the considerable market penetration that Mobivity has already been able to accomplish.

Mobile payments cause suspicion among Canadian merchants

| March 24, 2013

Mobile Payments Canada retailers suspicionBusinesses in Canada seem interested in the technology but are wary of the costs that will be involved.

The wireless industry in Canada is strengthening the push that it has been making to accelerate the adoption of mobile payments, but merchants are feeling frustrated and pressured as they anticipate higher fees.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has said that businesses are preparing to be hit with costs.

The organization, which represents over 109,000 small businesses in the country, said that mobile payments are primed to develop into the “next big fee palooza” for credit card companies, banks, payment processors, and wireless carriers. It has expressed that there has been a “breakdown of trust” between those providers and small businesses.

Small businesses are just waiting to see what higher processing fees and other premiums come with mobile payments.

The CFIB said that the lack of trust from small business toward those companies already exists and is coming from the premium credit card transaction processes that already involve higher processing fees in order to accept them. Now the organization says those companies are waiting to see what mobile payments will have up its sleeves.

The CFIB has said that it is seeking an “express consent” requirement. This would mean that merchants would not have to accept transactions over smartphones and tablets just because they have signed up for the programs to accept contactless credit card transactions.

Canadians have already been using the Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass contactless terminals in order to make small purchases. Those are the same devices that could be used to accept mobile payments through NFC technology and the CFIB is concerned that the industry will soon be implementing new fees with the use of those devices for accepting smartphone transactions. This would make it difficult for small businesses to remove that option later on if they already have the devices for the contactless card transactions.

On the other hand, banks and wireless providers have stated that they do not have any intention to implement new fees for mobile payments but are concerned that a provision for express consent would slow down merchant adoption of the transaction option.