Tag: weve

O2 Wallet is shutting down in March

O2, a prominent communications company in Europe, has announced that its mobile wallet service will be shut down at the end of March this year. Mobile wallets have been growing in popularity, but the market is currently saturated with a wide variety of these mobile applications, making it difficult for any one service to stand out. Continued focus on a mobile wallet platform that is, essentially, identical to others is becoming an increasing dangerous trap for companies are heavily investing themselves int he world of mobile commerce.

Wallet applications are becoming more plentiful

While O2 is shutting down its mobile wallet service, the company is not expected to pull out of mobile commerce entirely. The O2 Wallet was launched approximately 18 months ago and was considered one of the first wallet applications from a large company. The app was meant to provide consumers with a way to manage their money and other financial information and received a strong following. Over the past year, however, much about the mobile commerce market has changed, leading O2 to believe that its wallet is no longer viable for consumers.

O2 begins focusing more heavily on Weve platform

O2 is now looking for ways to help people manage their money more effectively. Currently, O2 is involved in a joint venture with mobile network operators EE and Vodafone. Through this venture, the companies are working to develop a new mobile commerce platform called Weve. The platform is set to launch in spring of this year and promises to provide consumers with a variety of features that makes managing their financial information and shopping online with a mobile device easier.

Weve attracts strong support

Weve has already won the support of several major banks in the United Kingdom, including Barclays, HSBC, and Lloyds. The mobile commerce platform has also managed to overcome some legal issues concerning Europe’s competition laws. Whether or not O2 will devote the majority of its focus to the mobile commerce platform or decide to develop a new mobile wallet has yet to be seen.

The alliance between the two companies is estimated to be worth approximately £500,000.

A cross portfolio contract is bringing Weve – the m-commerce platform that was created by Vodafone, O2, and EE – together with Heineken UK in a mobile marketing campaign to target smartphone carrying consumers.

This is one element of a larger deal worth a half of a billion pounds that is meant to expand Heineken’s m-commerce presence.

The alcohol company is hoping that it will be able to broaden the reach of its ads throughout the smartphone channel with this mobile marketing partnership. It was negotiated by Starcom MediaVest Group and will be reaching all of the brands from Heineken, including Fosters, Strongbow, and Bulmers. It will be launching its campaigns throughout July and continuing them throughout the remainder of the year.

Heineken has been growing its focus on mobile marketing as it grows its presence on the smartphone channel.

The company is especially looking focused on the “always on” environment that involves mobile marketing through messaging. This new partnership represents a continuing increase that has been occurring year over year in its investments into this space. The reason is that it has found that the brands that have been concentrating more on smartphone advertising and on being tech savvy are those that are gaining a much more meaningful access to consumers and that are achieving a richer audience insight level.

Senior brand manager from Heineken UK, Lynsey Hurst spoke of this new mobile marketing deal by saying that “The opportunity with Weve is unique and is naturally full of innovation, Weve are uniquely positioned in the market, both in terms of targeting capabilities and detailed audience understanding, they are therefore a perfect partner for our brands to be working more closely with.”

It was also revealed that Weve and Heineken will be working together on focused research in order to be able to measure the value of their mobile marketing strategies and campaigns. It will also be monitoring the impact made on the sales data by their central off-trade and on-trade partners. The goal is to be able to gain a much better understanding of the techniques and hone the strategy in the most effective and efficient way.