Tag: zapp

Mobile commerce competition continues to heat up

It is not uncommon for companies to compete with one another, especially in the field of mobile commerce. It is relatively uncommon, however, for start-ups to target large corporations as their major competition. Mobile commerce firm Zapp, which is based in the United Kingdom, has taken aim at both Visa and MasterCard, seeking to dethrone these two companies in the mobile commerce arena. Zapp plans to boast of more than 20 million users by the end of 2017, an ambitious goal that if achieved would make the firm one of the most successful entities in the mobile commerce field.

Zapp aims for 20 million users by 2017

Zapp was launched earlier this year and aims to make mobile payments in stores, online, and through applications more convenient and accessible to consumers in the United Kingdom. The firm intends to incorporate its mobile payments system into banking application from some of the country’s largest financial firms. Zapp is reportedly close to closing deals with three prominent banks in the UK, which will give the company significant momentum to launch its mobile commerce services through these institutions at some point next year.

Banks could incorporate Zapp services

Zapp is designed to bypass card networks. Using Zapp, consumers will have a direct connection to their bank accounts, which can be used to make mobile payments for goods and services. Zapp claims that this will make mobile commerce more convenient for consumers as they will never have to deal with physical cards or other forms of physical currency.

Retailers show interest in Zapp

The mobile commerce firm is not only focused on banks, of course, as it also expects several prominent retailers in the UK to make use of its services. Zapp is proving attractive to retailers through the promise of higher checkout completions and the low fees associated with the services it offers. Whether Zapp will be able to compete with Visa and MasterCard among retailers and banks has yet to be seen, as both Visa and MasterCard have a significant head start over the mobile commerce start-up.

The United Kingdom will likely be adding a new smartphone friendly transaction service.

According to a recent announcement, the United Kingdom may soon be adding a brand new mobile payments platform to its offerings and will involved every major bank in the country.

When this comes together, it could be an important example for how financial institutions can collaborate.

The British banks will be working together for this mobile payments platform and may help to provide an example of how other financial institutions around the world can work together in order to make this type of transaction more widespread and to help to provide a more universal experience.

This type of partnership among banks can help to make mobile payments a lot more widespread.

The mobile payments service will be called Zapp and it was initially launched by VocaLink. That company is the collectively owned ATM and transaction network by the British banks. This will simply expand on the type of smartphone transaction service that is available in a similar way that other types of transactions have already been spread.

The Zapp mobile payments service will allow consumers to link their smartphone numbers to their bank accounts. This way, it will let these shoppers use their devices to send money in several different ways and for many different purposes. For example, it will allow everything from paying bills over smartphones to making peer to peer funds transfers.

The announcement revealed that the mobile payments platform has received funding from VocaLink worth £16 million, so far, and that it will still require an additional £100 million in order to bring it up to the ability to launch in 2014, as is intended.

Many different mobile payments platforms are currently launching all over the world, including in the United Kingdom. However, this will be among the first of its kind in terms of collaboration across all major banks in the country. The transactions have been very slow to take off, but it could be just this type of service that may make the difference to convince both businesses and consumers to adopt this cashless form of payment.