The best Google Checkout Overview

Google Checkout - Good or Bad for Smaller Online Businesses?

Nancy Hackett blogs a quick overview of Google Checkout and looks at what's in it for buyers, sellers and Google.

(courtesy of Payments News)

Payment options

Do Consumers Need More Ways To Pay Online?

Javelin Strategy & Research has announced the results of the 2006 Annual Javelin Consumer Payment Poll commissioned by PaymentOne - concluding that the majority of online consumers would buy more if safer and more convenient payment options were offered. Javelin reports that the Payment Poll responders said they would each spend $960 more per year if better payment options were available online, which, based on over 15 million active online buyers, translates to $14.4 billion of lost revenue opportunity for digital merchants.

LUUP in the Blogosphere (courtesy of Technorati)

1. 

   Making MCommerce Simple, Safe And Cheap

   By Scott Loftesness in Payments News Payments Strat... 4 hours ago

   Rob Perkins of the UK's LUUP writes a letter to the editor of the Financial Times about what's required for mobile commerce to succeed - saying "If we want m-commerce to take off, we have to focus

2. Text To Pay

   In Le Paiement Mobile 18 days ago

   [ Text_to_pay2] Encore une vidéo sur le paiement par mobile de personne à personne aux USA ... . Les solutions de P2P mobile payment: Europe : Crandy, Luup USA: Obopay, Paypal mobile

3. UK tech PR client wins

   By Drew B in Drew B's take on tech PR 32 days ago

   PR Week has reported that some tech PR accounts have been snapped up of late. Pleon has landed the Kyocera Mita account. Omniture has given its UK & France PR work to Carrot. Sigma Systems has given its UK PR to Kinross & Render. Norwegian firm LUUP has hired Brands2Life for UK PR.

4. Luup en UK

   In Le Paiement Mobile 33 days ago

   Après avoir démarré en Norvège, le moyen de paiement par mobile Luup annonce son arrivée sur les marchés anglais et allemand. Annonce de bonne augure pour le marché du m-payment en Europe après les

5. 

   Le système de paiement sur mobile LUUP gagne ...

   By 131952 in Packcreator.com 34 days ago

   Le système de paiement sur mobile LUUP gagne l’Europe Posted in Articles, Dématérialisation monnaie, Téléphone Mobile by 131952 on the mai 29th, 2006 La société mère de LUUP, Contopronto, est norvégienne, et indépendante des opérateurs ... européenne conforme à la directive e-money. Son système de paiement sur mobile, LUUP, vient d’être agréé au

6. M-Commerce is here!

   In Temi’s Internet Blogs 43 days ago

   The long awaited e-Commerce revolution on the mobile phone, popularly called M-Commerce is finally here ... the technologies required are now in place, a company called LUUP a joint British and Norwegian

7. M-commerce is coming

   In Cobweb's Small Business News 49 days ago

   Paying for items with a mobile phone could soon take off in the UK, in the same way it has overseas. LUUP, which is already up and running in Norway, allows users to send or receive money or pay for items. The phone is linked to a bank account, a credit or debit card. M-commerce

8. M-Payments in the UK and Germany

   By Jan Ondrus in Mobile Payment Update 57 days ago

   Mobile payments are moving in the UK and Germany. LUUP, the first payment system specifically for mobiles, launches today in both the UK and Germany. LUUP (called LUUPAY in Germany) allows consumers to use ... it: - Payments News - Guardian - LUUP’s press release

9. New SMS peer-to-peer payment system launched

   In ITU Strategy and Policy Unit N... 59 days ago

   A new mobile phone payment system has been launched in has been launched in the U.K. and Germany. LUUP (called LUUPAY in Germany) allows consumers to use their mobile phone like a wallet to shop

Our comment in the FT

Making m-commerce simple, safe and cheap

By Rob Perkins

Published: July 3 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 3 2006 03:00

From Mr Rob Perkins.

Sir, With regard to your article on m-commerce ("Mobile phone? That'll do nicely", Digital Business, June 21): it is good to see the mobile payments industry in the spotlight, particularly in light of the recent flux of entrants into this market place. Right now, the biggest driver for the mobile payment industry is the youth market and its increasing demand for smaller purchases such as ringtones and wallpapers. For this market to expand, we need a simple, safe and cost-effective solution. Micro payments via premium SMS (short message service) simply aren't sustainable - the fees are too high for many merchants and simply unaffordable for many consumers.

ADVERTISEMENT

Young people wanting to make small purchases via their mobile phone need a more cost-effective and controllable m-payment service. In Germany and the UK, mobile phone users can already make payments via a mobile e-money account, that can be topped up from a personal bank account or funded directly from credit/debit cards. Consumers can fully manage their account online, just as they would with online banking, and content providers also benefit from having a cheaper alternative to premium SMS.

The article also suggests that peer-to-peer money transfers via mobile phones are yet to be made possible. However, this concept is already available for consumers wanting to repay friends or split restaurant bills in the UK, Germany, Norway and Poland, for anyone with a mobile phone, any network and via a simple SMS.

If we want m-commerce to take off, we have to focus on making it simpler, safer and cheaper for consumers to make payments via their phone.

Rob Perkins,

Director - UK,

LUUP,

London W1J 8ED, UK

The Google Scoop

Google Checkout: Pros And Cons

Steve Bryant posts on his eWeek Google Watch blog about the pros and cons of Google Checkout in "Five Reasons Why You Won't Use Google Checkout (and 5 Reasons You Will)".

Google Checkout: Amazon's Worst Nightmare

Rafe Needleman posts on his CNET Web 2.0 blog that he believes Google Checkout is a serious threat to Amazon.com - because it makes checkout at non-Amazon merchant locations just about as convenient as buying via 1-Click on Amazon.com itself. He also points out that as a result of Google Checkout "no other online company will end up knowing as much about the spending behaviors of online consumers as Google."

Google Checkout: Who's On First?

A friend writes: "If I understand the Google Checkout service correctly, the point that all these analysts missed is that Google Checkout is a one-card wallet. Seems that point wasn't lost on Citi. In a one-card wallet, being first in the wallet, means you are top of wallet, so being first to market is a big deal. I suspect Google opted for a one-card wallet in order to create a very smooth customer checkout experience."

ZDNet: Google now baby-steps away from eBay-like auction service

Slashdot: Google Launches PayPal Rival

AuctionBytes: eBay's Fears Confirmed: Google Launches Checkout Service

Hands On: Google's New Checkout Service

Dennis O'Reilly of PC World writes about his first hand experiences with Google Checkout today. He says "I suspect the little green Google Checkout cart will soon be all over the Web."

PayPal vs. "GBuy"

Bruce Cundiff of Javelin Strategy and Research writes on his blog about PayPal vs. Google, thinking in terms of on eBay (where issues have been raised as to whether eBay would allow its merchants to accept a Google-provided payment service) vs. the off-eBay merchant opportunity (which is where he thinks the real battleground will be).

Move Over PayPal, Here Comes Google Checkout

Google this morning launched the long rumored (and often called GBuy) Google Checkout, a new online payment option for ecommerce merchants and online shoppers that plays on many of the same consumer themes of safety and convenience that have been key to PayPal's success. Google Checkout allows consumers to store - in a new version of an online wallet - their payment and shipping address information with Google. (According to Laura Petrecca writing for USA Today, "Google says it also is in talks with online payment service PayPal to let Checkout handle payments by holders of PayPal accounts, which connect with its users' credit cards and banks.") Assuming merchant acceptance of Google Checkout ramps up, the new service appears to position Google as a major hub for ecommerce transactions on the web.

PayPal's Virtual Debit Card

Yeah, I know, it's PayPal - but it's still relevant...

In an article mostly about Google's rumored launch of a payment service, Business Week's Robert Hof also mentions that next month PayPal will begin testing a "virtual debit card" for use on web sites that don't accept PayPal directly. According to Hof, using a small toolbar downloaded to their browser, PayPal users will be able to get a one time-use MasterCard card number linked to their PayPal account.

eBay Could Ban Google's GBuy As Payment Method

Ina Steiner reports for AucitonBytes.com on eBay's Safe Payments Policy introduced last October and speculates that it seems unlikely that eBay would allow its sellers to advertise any new Google payment service in their eBay listings - at least initially.

• Business Week: Google's eBay Challenge
  
• CNET News.com: Open your wallet to Google

TextPayMe Glitches - Payments News

TextPayMe Temporarily Disables Credit/Debit Card Funding

Friends are reporting receiving an email notice from mobile payments operator TextPayMe saying that they've "temporarily disabled" their credit/debit card payment option and will only be supporting funding directly from bank checking accounts in the meantime. In the email, TextPayMe says it plans to bring back the credit/debit card capability "shortly" along with introducing some other new features to the service.

FT on Mobile Commerce

M-commerce: Mobile phone? That’ll do nicely

By Danny Bradbury

Published: June 21 2006 10:29 | Last updated: June 21 2006 10:29

A few years back, many people thought that by now everyone would pay for soft drinks by waving a cellphone at a vending machine. In reality, mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has been slow to get started.

Things looked promising in 2003 when a group of operators including Orange, Vodafone, and T-Mobile formed Simpay, a Europe-wide consortium that would have allowed mobile users to charge goods and services to their mobile phone bills. This fell apart after T-Mobile dropped out.

Operators are still trying to make m-commerce work, however.

Transactions mainly focus on micro payments (high volume, low value transactions) rather than macro payments (lower volume payments for larger amounts).

The popular way of fulfilling these payments has been premium rate SMS, where users receive an SMS message costing about £1.50. However, SMS was not designed for this, and many consider it inefficient.

Jeremy Flynn, who runs the content side of Vodafone’s business, wants to provide a standard way for people to make purchases with their mobile phones. Vodafone and Orange started a successor to Simpay, called XPay, now rebranded PayForIt.

Rather than clearing payments, it acts as a standard interface for merchants to arrange payments, which are then processed with payment systems such as Vodafone’s m-pay, which bills the customer’s account.

But with operators routinely charging at least a 20 per cent margin on an m-commerce transaction, some companies are unwilling to participate.

Verrus, which provides mobile phone-based parking meter payments, uses credit card transactions triggered by a mobile phone. Customers use their phone to send the parking meter’s code to Verrus, which then registers the payment and bills their card through a customer account. And this all happens outside the telephone operator’s billing system.

“For us it has to go to a credit or debit card, because it’s too expensive to do premium rate SMS,” says UK MD Robin Bevan, who adds that there is no cost-effective way to charge payments to mobile phone accounts either. “Where motorists get billed is in the most cost-effective place. Right now that’s via the credit card.”

Monilink, which will launch later this year, will also concentrate on using the phone as a way to control other payment mechanisms, rather than using the phone bill itself as a way to pay for goods and services.

Monilink will enable banks to offer internet banking functions such as account balances and mobile phone account top-ups.

Co-founder Alastair Lukies imagines that users will also eventually be able to transfer money between each other’s bank accounts using their mobile phones. “The mobile phone will be the remote control for our lives,” he says. “But it’s the remote control, not the TV. The payment device might remain the card in your pocket or the cash in your wallet.”

But how does the phone become a remote control?

Lukies sees a future when radio frequency identification chips in phones could control access to ticket barriers. For example, an automatic payment system could be on a chip in a phone, with top-up credits ordered direct from a bank account, via the phone.

Motorola is trying to use the phone as a means of paying for goods and services at a physical location with its M-Wallet, a radio-enabled chip inside a phone that communicates with in-store point of sale systems.

This could be used as a substitute for a physical credit card, which would still bill goods to your credit card account, explains Navin Mehta, Motorola’s vice-president of applications management.

But the M-Wallet, now undergoing trials, would require retailers to upgrade their point of sale terminals, raising the cost.

In time, the phone could become a useful device for co-ordinating transactions that are resolved using other payment methods such as credit cards.

If that happens, the credit card companies and the retailers will be happy because they will have another channel with which to do business. And the mobile phone companies should be happy because the phone will become an even more integral part of people’s lives.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

YK Youth Market at IHT

Wireless: Mobile operators forget parents at their peril - Technology - International Herald Tribune:

"According to a recent survey by Carrick James Market Research, a British agency that focuses on the youth market, 63 percent of Britons aged 7 to 19 own mobile phones; among 7- to 9-year-olds alone, that ratio is one out of every four, and for 17- to 19-year-olds it is almost nine out of 10. Thirty percent of these kids have downloaded free ring tones, 19 percent have paid for them and 10 percent have paid for games."

read the whole article

Virgin Mobile US takes PayPal for top-up & do donations

From Fierce Wireless

Today I continue to share the discussion I had recently with Dan Schulman, CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, arguably the most high-profile successful MVNO in the U.S. market. Monday we featured his comments regarding the state of the MVNO market and Virgin Mobile's role in it. Today we share with you his insights about the company's new pricing plans and features, future plans for high-speed data and Sugar Mama, that new program that gives users free airtime in exchange for watching advertising.

On how Virgin Mobile is attacking the youth market: "We have 2,000 insiders that are alpha teams we've selected and talk to every month. We run advertising by them. We have to be strong and get good honest feedback, but it can be painful at times. For our newest pricing plans and features, we talked to 6,000 people that were either prospects or current customers. That's a ridiculously high number, but it's a part of how we hope to differentiate ourselves… We looked at different usage groups to come up with our new offers. We completely revamped our portfolio. One of the things we've done is offer something no one else has in prepaid: text bundles. We're giving text messaging for as little as a penny. More than 60 percent of our base uses text messaging on a regular basis… We do think that for the youth market, text messaging is the new talk out there… We put out five bucket plans, starting as low as $14.99. That's the lowest in the market for buckets of minutes… Unlike everyone else, we're not forcing customers to register a debit card with us, they can pay via Paypal, credit card, cash or via the Top Up cards we sell… There is still a chunk of customers who want to pay by the minute so we've offered a deal for $6.99 month that allows users to get a 10-cents-a-minute rate all the time. Everything in our value proposition is based on customer feedback.

On the company's new social-activism campaign known as RE Generation: "One of the things I wanted to since we are now a profitable company and have reached a certain scale is to figure out how to enable customers to become an activist base to advocate for social change… The youth market is generally concerned about social issues but they struggle with how to get involved… One of the things we decided to do was put our money where our mouth is and help customers get involved in pro-social organizations. We're now teaming with two organizations, Youth Noise, the 'MySpace' of socially active kids, and Stand Up For Kids, which is focused homeless teens and trying to help them get back on their feet… Anytime our customers download a ringtone, wallpaper or game, we give 5 percent of the profits to those charities, and we are also working with a couple of artists who are yet to be announced who have agreed to give 50 to 100 percent of the profits from their ringtones to charity as well, and we'll give 100 percent to charities as well… Customers can also go into their bank account and short code a dollar to Stand Up For Kids or Youth Noise, and we will match up to $500,000… If you are a youth marketer, it's not just a nice thing to do, it's an essential. We're going to carry this on and expand it in the years to come because kids expect brands to do that kind of thing.

On Virgin Mobile's plans for EV-DO: "We try not to think of it in terms of EV-DO or Rev. A, but try to think about what the applications our customers want. Will the customer feel satisfied? And what will the pricing be? When you get all of those aligned, you have a good thing… What we're going to do is continually take advantage of the customer experience element of some of these new applications customer want now but can be enabled as a result of faster connectivity. Primarily, that is really around video at this point. Streaming video works just fine. You don't need EV-DO right now."

On newly launched Sugar Mama: "For our population that really does matter because they are on tight budgets. They have spare time, love brands and love to be entertained… We spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this, and we got a huge amount of feedback about what was okay and what absolutely was not okay. A lot of people are talking about advertising on the phone, but not many kids have video capabilities for video advertising (Kids have the ability to watch online ads or answer questions via text messaging.) The majority of our customers are new to the industry so they don't go with the most advanced phone out there. We also felt everyone would have to opt-in… Kids have been marketed to since they were 1-year-olds. They are savvy about it. We wanted to have like-minded brands that appeal to them… Our market research tested off the charts for us in terms of how kids reacted to it." - Lynnette

More Google vs. PayPal on AOL's money channel

PayPal CEO: Ready To Compete With Any Google Offering

By Desiree J. Hanford, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Dow Jones

LAS VEGAS -(Dow Jones)- EBay Inc.'s (EBAY) online payment service PayPal is accustomed to having competition, and it will "compete rigorously" if Google Inc. (GOOG) launches a similar product, PayPal President Jeff Jordan said.

PayPal's "competitive intelligence" has told the company that at some point Google will begin offering a service similar to that of PayPal, Jordan told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview Tuesday here during eBay Live, an annual gathering of buyers and sellers.

"We respect their entry and stand ready to compete," Jordan said, noting that PayPal has had plenty of competition from other companies since its inception.

PayPal had 105 million accounts as of March 31, the end of eBay's first quarter, a 47% increase from the number it had a year earlier. PayPal's total payment volume, or the total value of transactions during the quarter, was $8.8 billion, a 41% increase from from the year-earlier period.

There has been speculation for about a year that Google will launch a competitor to PayPal. That speculation heated up Friday when RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan said in a research note that Google is set to launch a payment system known as "GBuy" on June 28. The system appears to be a direct competitor to PayPal's initiatives off the eBay site, Rohan said in the note.

Although "GBuy" is focused on consumer-to-merchant transactions, there's no reason why it couldn't be expanded at some point to include consumer-to-consumer transactions, said Rohan.

On a worldwide basis, PayPal charges sellers an average of 3.5% of a transaction price to use the service. Rohan doesn't expect Google to initially charge for "GBuy," but he estimates that the company will eventually charge 1.5% to 2% for the service.

EBay'sPayPal can be used by consumers paying merchants or by consumers paying other individuals. PayPal has been expanding its use off of eBay sites, and is accepted by computer maker Dell Inc. (DELL) on its site for payment.

PayPal has been in existence since December 1998 and has spent a considerable amount of money ensuring that buyers and sellers feel safe using the system and are protected from fraud, Jordan said. He reiterated that the company has never shared the financial information of buyers with sellers.

The online payment service is easy to set up and is less expensive than some other forms of electronic payment, Jordan said. Small- and mid-size businesses see a 14% increase in sales when they begin offering PayPal on their sites because the payment system brings instant credibility to their company, he said.

"What we do is operationally intensive," Jordan said. "We think we're pretty good at it and have a pretty strong lead."

PayPal's biggest challenge is executing on all the opportunities it has, both on eBay's sites and off of them, Jordan said.

Shares of eBay ended Tuesday's session at $30.51, up 1.3% for the day. The stock is trading near the low end of its 52-week range of $28.87-$47.86.

-By Desiree J. Hanford, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4135; desiree.hanford@ dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 06-14-060925ET Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

PayPal feeback on AuctionByes

PayPal Panel at eBay Conference Gets Reaction from Sellers

By Ina SteinerAuctionBytes.com June 15, 2006

While the PayPal panel at the eBay Live conference on Wednesday was lightly attended, those who were there had some strong feelings about using PayPal, primarily regarding cross-border trading and dispute resolution issues.

One attendee had traveled all the way from the UK to make his point. He said he sells on eBay.com, and pays 1 percent more than every other person in the room because he is based in the UK.

A PayPal panelist said PayPal has higher costs in the UK and there are higher costs for cross-border transactions. He recommended the seller open a U.S. bank account, while the seller countered that since 9/11, it was "impossible" to open a bank account in the U.S. without a social security number.

A Canadian seller said he is being charged 55 cents Canadian instead of 30 cents U.S. per transaction.

Another seller complained about PayPal's Seller Protection Plan, calling it "a joke," and he was followed by a seller who said of PayPal's 40-minute presentation, "great slides, great presentation. I don't believe a word of it."

Some expressed the opinion that eBay should not be refereeing disputes.
Others who asked questions had a milder point of view. "I like PayPal," and, "I don't mind PayPal too much either."

While some of the attendees made long statements, others had suggestions for PayPal:

• allow multi-user accounts so the president of the company doesn't have to get on the phone with PayPal customer service;
• send a token to eBay when a refund is issued so that the buyer doesn't get reminder notices to pay the seller;
  expand the program where eBay uses buyer history to confirm buyers addresses (this is being used in the UK and Canada);

One person said of international trading, "the extra profit greatly outweighs the losses."

Reuters report on GBuy

Google tests Web buying system, says unlike PayPal

Thu Jun 15, 2006 4:22pm ET

NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters) - Internet search leader Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is testing a system that aims to speed purchases online but bears no resemblance to the popular PayPal payments service of Web auctioneer eBay (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Google's chief executive said on Thursday.

Analysts have speculated whether Google would enter into direct competition with PayPal, dubbing its potential new service "GBuy" to capture commercial transaction data.
Google's system aims to allow quicker purchases by a consumer from a marketer, and a beta version is expected soon, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"It's not like PayPal at all," Schmidt said when asked about "GBuy" during a New York meeting hosted by Conde Nast's Portfolio business magazine.

"It makes no sense for us to go into businesses that are occupied by existing leaders," he said. "We want to solve new problems in the payments space."

He said the system was targeted at advertisers and not general consumers, but did not elaborate further on how it differed from PayPal.

"Google management is getting off on a technicality" in saying its purchasing system differs from PayPal, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan. "A merchant-to-consumer payments system, that's close enough."

In a research note last week, Rohan wrote that Google was likely to launch such a service by the end of the month, saying there was no reason it could not expand to consumer-to-consumer transactions like many PayPal payments.

Google would not charge merchants for the service during the beta phase, but could be expected to take fees of up to 2 percent after some period of time, Rohan wrote.

"You have to target the advertisers first," he said, referring to the need to get a critical mass of merchants on board to make a purchasing system attractive to consumers.

Google officials could not immediately be reached for further comment.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

FTMD market - Fierce Wirless

OTA to rival online music services by '07

According to a recent report from IDC, users of over-the-air music downloads will surpass the total number of online music-service users by 2010. The firm predicts that by then, the OTA market will have over 50 million users and generate more than $1 billion in revenue. Perhaps more surprising is the prediction that by the end of the year the total number of OTA users will equal about half the number of online music service users. It's hard to resist the knee-jerk assertion that if true, the trend could mean the iPod's days are numbered: However, the iPhone rumors are still going strong.

For more on IDC's recent report:
- see this press release

High UK mobile socialising - Payments News

According to a recent report from M:Metrics, British mobile phone users are more likely to take part in mobile social networking apps than are Americans, Germans or French users.

The study found that 10.1 percent of British users, 7.2 percent of German users, 6.5 percent of French users and 6.7 percent of American users say they have either uploaded videos or photos to the Web, used chat or used dating apps in the month of April.

Generating user-created content remained consistent across each group but trended toward the 13- to 17-year-old age group. The study also found that males are the most active social networkers, comprising 59.2 percent of the users in the U.K.

Skype builds in PayPal functionality

160 Characters Report on Mobile Payments Event

http://www.160characters.org/news.php?action=view&nid=2037

PayPal's developer community - Payments News

PayPal's New Developer Community

PayPal has opened a new online PayPal Developer Community featuring discussion forums on a number of topics as well as a new PayPal Developer Blog. One particularly interesting post on the new blog covers Saturday's session "PayPal’s Digital Money Platform" presented by Tim Villanueva, General Manager for the PayPal Platform & Developer Network.

E-Commerce on a Budget

Richard Morochove of PC World writes about what's involved in becoming an online merchant - and getting paid for what you sell online - recommending PayPal's Website Payments Standard as an easy and cost effective way to start.

Digital Transactions report on alternatives

Alternative Payments Are Gaining Online, But Not All Retailers Are Sold

(June 9, 2006) The share of e-commerce dollars coming from so-called alternative payment methods will grow from 12% in 2005 to 26% in 2009, an electronic-payments expert says. And two such alternatives emerging only now will gain momentum over the coming three years, with PIN debit accounting for about 3% and NACHA’s new online-payment application grabbing around 2% of Internet sales by 2009, according to projections made by Dan Schatt, senior analyst at Boston-based researcher Celent LLC. Still, online merchants seeking to break the hammerlock of credit cards may want to think hard about which alternative payment methods they adopt, and how much they are prepared to invest. “Implementing an alternative payment method isn’t an easy process,” cautions Alicia Berry, director of operations at DVD Empire, a Warrendale, Pa.-based e-commerce merchant.

Schatt and Berry, who spoke this week at a Chicago trade show for Web merchants sponsored by Internet Retailer magazine, represent two sometimes conflicting currents of thought coursing through the electronic-transactions industry. On the one hand, credit cards’ ever-mounting acceptance costs, coupled with the need to pour more and more resources into back-office operations to review card-based orders for fraud, are pushing online retailers to seek more efficient payment types. Indeed, according to Schatt, Web merchants’ success in getting online fraud down to 1.6% of sales from around 3% four years ago has come with an eye-popping price tag: some $1.12 billion invested last year alone in back-office staff and fraud-detection technology.

At the same time, merchants are more and more concerned about customers’ rising worries over card security online. “A fair number of people are not making transactions online because they think their credit card data are going to be mis-used or intercepted,” Schatt told his audience of e-merchants. That has led to a “pent-up” demand for alternative payment methods among both consumers and merchants, he added. It has also put a crimp in e-commerce growth. While the proportion of Web-site visitors who bought something online jumped from 48% to 61% between 2000 and 2002, that percentage has increased to just 67% in the years since, Schatt said.

As a result, credit cards are losing e-commerce market share perhaps more rapidly than many observers may have thought: they now account for 58.3% of online sales, down from a dominant 96% share in 1999, according to Schatt. By 2009, he forecasts, that share will have dwindled to just 48.4%. This decline comes as credit cards continue to make gains in the U.S. economy as a whole. They account for 26.1% of all transactions, up from 22.1% six years ago, and will reach a 29.3% share by 2009.

By contrast, new electronic payment systems, such as real-time debit and third-party credit, are likely to grow fast. Bill Me Later, a service from Timonium, Md.-based I4 Commerce Inc., represents a trend in third-party credit, or so-called invoicing, that will grab just over 2% of all online dollars by 2009, up from 0.3% now, Schatt says. Use of the automated clearing house will grow as NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting body for the ACH, continues to develop its new online-payment system, for which it will launch a pilot early next year (Digital Transactions News, May 11). And technology companies like ATM Direct, which announced its first merchant this week, will help drive up PIN debit usage online (Digital Transactions News, June 5 and June 7).

On the other hand, DVD Empire’s Berry sounded a note of caution. “Of all the payment methods I had grandiose plans of implementing six months ago when Internet Retailer asked me to speak, I’ve implemented none,” she told the audience. Often, she said, new payment methods demand costly and thorough-going changes to existing operations, making it hard to cost-justify them when looking at their transaction potential. Even new technology from an established payment network--Visa USA’s Verified by Visa user-authentication system--has proven nearly unworkable. Two years after embarking on the project, Berry said, DVEmpire still hasn’t been able to bring the system live. “It took us 14 months just to get this online for one day,” she said, and this with the efforts of six programmers. Visa’s server farms “go down frequently,” she said, while even things like users’ pop-up blockers and non-Internet Explorer browsers can frustrate the system.

Still, even Berry hasn’t given up entirely on alternative payments. Her site will be accepting PayPal next week, she said, while Bill Me Later could be an option later on.

Google Buy report at Red Herring

Paying Up on Google

Google will roll out online payment system to compete with PayPal.
June 9, 2006

Google is expected to unveil its online payment system on June 28, a long-anticipated service that will compete with eBay’s PayPal, according to an analyst’s report issued on Friday.

The new system also allows the search giant to determine what products and services get the most hits, a feature that will help Google adjust online ad rates in response.

Called GBuy, the system will process payments between shoppers and merchants, RBC analyst Jordan Rohan wrote. Moreover, he said, GBuy could eventually expand to handle consumer-to-consumer payments.

“GBuy has the potential to be as important to Google as Google Maps or Google News, and there is very little that competitors can do to thwart its success,” Mr. Rohan said.

During GBuy’s beta phase, he noted, Google will not charge merchants service fees. But later, the company likely will charge a fee of 1.5 to 2 percent of each transaction―similar to, or slightly less than, what PayPal charges.

On its search result pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy as a “trusted GBuy merchant,” to encourage consumers to view the merchant as safe, and thus, increase click rates.

Higher Merchant Charges

More important for Google, GBuy is another way for the company to charge merchants more for advertising. The payment system captures all transaction data flow, and lets Google see which categories and keyword bids produce the most hits and sales.

“If harnessed, the precision of this targeting could be revolutionary,” Mr. Rohan said.

To be sure, he noted, some merchants will resist allowing Google to view all their transaction information, but they won’t have much choice because Google would also drive more traffic to merchant sites.

“It may direct more clicks to the merchants that offer GBuy, much in the same way the eBay’s feedback loop drives higher auction prices for those Power Sellers with high customer approval ratings,” Mr. Rohan said. “In short, offering GBuy will increase the efficacy of search for GBuy merchants, making it too profitable to resist.”

Google didn’t respond to inquiries about GBuy.

Mr. Rohan did not indicate whether GBuy is a new and expanded version of Google Base, an online payment system rolled out to select merchants in February.

Mr. Rohan has a 12-month stock price target of $465 for Google. In mid-afternoon trading on Friday, shares of Google traded down $4, or about 1 percent, at $389.28 on the Nasdaq.

Contact the writer: WTanaka@RedHerring.com

LUUPAY at XT Commerce

http://www.xt-commerce.com/de/news/index.php?item=23

PayPal signs first mobile merchants in the UK (MoCoNews)

» Paypal Signs Up Content Partners in UK For Mobile Payments

Paypal, which recently launched mobile payments and money transfers in U.S. and U.K., has signed up EMI, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Oxfam, Stuff and Maxim magazines as its first "Text to Buy" partners in the U.K. The brands will become the first in U.K. to enable shoppers to text and buy through the new service using their mobile phones.
PayPal says it has about 10 million account-holders in the UK.
Related:
– Brits To Spend $3 Billion A Year in Content Downloads
– Paypal's Mobile Payment Content Partners
– Paypal Launches Mobile Payment and Buying Options

Great article on Mobile Content at MoCoNews

Pros and Cons of Mobile Game Development

In some ways mobile games epitomise mobile content -- the pros and cons are the same, but more exaggerated. Device fragmentation is a problem for all mobile content, but it is a particular problem for mobile game developers. There are more mobile phones than TVs or cinemas, so mobile video has a far greater potential audience, but the difference in figures between mobile phones and game consoles is far greater. And so on, and so forth...
The biggest pro of mobile content (in my opinion) is that it's still relatively cheap to do, so there is still a window for small creators to have a go. The biggest con is the fragmentated nature of the industry -- not just the handsets, but also the number of operators that have to be dealt with. There are ways around these problems, of course...

Read the whole article here

Mobile Content Buyers Report - at MoCoNEws

» Mobile Content Buyers Prefer To Shop Online

Related Topics: Research, Latin America -- Permalink - Comments (0) [by james]

Compete has a report out about where people buy mobile content. More than 45% of "a group of tier-1 wireless carrier content purchasers" said they would rather buy their mobile content online than on their handset, with the internet's larger selection and easier usage being given as some reasons. Despite this, over 50% made their recent content purchase directly on their phone. Since the survey seemed to target people who actually made a purchase there's no information about people who wanted to buy certain content online but found it was only available on their handset, and so didn't make the purchase...carriers can perhaps work on something here.
Contact also claims that "from October to January 2006, Compete observed off-portal sites (Jamster, etc.) received 2.5 times more online interest than the content portions of the carrier sites. Over 40% of the people who ended up purchasing off-portal cited content selection as the primary reason they did not buy through their carrier. Another 33% said the off-portal sites offered a better price. For those who did purchase from their carrier, the majority said they feel more secure purchasing from their carrier website".
People who bought at off-portal sites tended to buy more games, ringtones, graphics and ringback tones than those who bought at carriers. Pay-as-you-go is the prefered model.

There's also some information about Latinos in the US, who are 23% more likely to be interested in buying a music-oriented handset and 30% more likely to consider a Swivel or Slider type handset. (via Mobile Analyst Watch)

10 Insights from the MEX Conference

MEX - The PMN Mobile User Experience conference - Day 2, Session 4, 10 REAL WORLD INSIGHTS - KEY MESSAGES FROM REAL USERS:

"Posted Live from MEX

Speaker: Tracy Ross, Principal Researcher, Mobile Telecoms, ESRI

Tracey talked about taking a step back to determine what users really want to do in a mobile context. Participative design tools, user mapping, diary studies, ‘experimenter’ immersion and pre/during/post task analysis are a mix of techniques that can be used. Tracey described ten studies at ESRI that used these techniques and provided some insights…

Going Out for the Night

*
Dipping in and out of apps is frustrating
*
Needs differ depending on content (e.g. whether know where they are going?)
*
Service must pass the ‘is it worth the bother’ test

What’s Needed of Mobile Commerce?

*
Cashless/cardless welcome
*
Swapping cash between phones desirable
*
Pointing phone towards need desirable (near field communications needed)

Hidden Secrets on Your Mobile

*
Boys - social and ego based - mainly photos
*
Girls - emotional - photos and text

Link between (casual) Games and Chocolate

• Girls - simple games, little concentration, likened to chocolate
• Boys - Competitive

Supporting Group Communications

• Groups fluid but overlapping
• Value in sending group comms - but under used
• Need to support multiple personas

Moblogging

• Close relationships, infrequent co-presence, low covertness
• Barriers - image quality, usability, cost
• Enablers - Being able to manipulate images, access from mobile, common format

Off The Beaten Track Crowd

• Tension between being contactable and behavioural etiquette
• Not just location but also where going and where been

Journeys

• Need ability to log reminders while travelling
• Need support services (speech, availability of services) to be able to do this on the move

Mobile workers

• Importance of organisational context (e.g. time estimates)
• Up to date centralised information required

Challenging environments

• Procedural interfaces don’t work (dip in, dip out)
• Need ability to capture and track"

Except from Globe and Mail article about Google Payments

globeandmail.com : On-line payments next on Google's to-do list:

"At the moment, when you click to buy something through Google Video or the Google Store, you have to sign an agreement with Google Payment Corp. -- a company the search engine giant set up last fall. Going to 'purchases.google.com' brings you to a login screen for your Google account, and the site then presents you with a list of all the videos and other items you've bought.

In other words, the structure is already there to support a whole range of purchasing. And while it is still early days for Google Base, the service has already been used by car dealers and real estate agents as a classifieds-style service, one that allows companies to upload their own database of items (hence the name Base) relatively easily. This could put the service squarely in the same camp as eBay, and appeal to that company's core market of 'power sellers.'

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Burnham has said a Google shopping portal could provide stiff competition for eBay's 'Buy It Now' feature, which accounts for about 35 per cent of eBay's revenue. Among other features, he notes that Google Base doesn't charge listing fees (as eBay does), only transaction fees -- although that might change if the service were extended to small businesses.

The potential for Google's payment services could be eeven broader than just Google Base, however. Forrester analyst Charlene Li points out that Google already accepts payments from its partners in the AdSense program, which gives it a good platform to launch a micropayment-style service, one that would allow consumers to pay tiny amounts for Web content, all of which could be aggregated by Google and distributed to publishers."

Read the whole article here

Nice overview of NTT Docomo's mobile payments

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Cashing in on mobile-crazy Japan:

"Cashing in on mobile-crazy Japan
By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Tokyo

Japan's biggest mobile phone provider is preparing to extend a new service which allows customers to use their handset as a credit card.

DoCoMo already offers a limited version of this service, and using your mobile to pay for things is very common in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia."

read more

Jemima's MEX report - MoCoNews

» @ MEX: Building Communities Around Identity, Presence And Interaction

[by Jemima Kiss] From the the PMN Mobile User Experience conference in London this week: The session I was really looking forward to: Frederick Ghahramani, director and co-founder of AirG, Vancouver-based mobile social networking specialists. He defined community with four key elements:

- Identity. How the user is represented.
- Presence. Tools like IM and ‘online now' indicators.
- Interaction. Content sharing, comment functions and so on.
- The user interface and experience fits round any or all of those.
Various sites have been built around some of those elements - Napster around interaction, Blogger around identity, Friendster around presence and identity - but (because you seemingly can't give a presentation on social networking without mentioning MySpace) MySpace was the first to combine identity, presence and interaction. "Identity gives a reason to interact and presence makes the interactivity real time," said Ghahramani. Pointing to his own MySpace page, he said: "What I see here is Blogger and Photoshare and then elements of Match.com, only not done as well, Friendster, only not done as well, and Napster - only not done as well. MySpace has become successful by playing a combination game."

Translating this experience to the mobile space will depend on user interface innovation, he said: "How do you combine identity, presence and interactivity on a 90×50 pixel screen?." Embed user interfaces that mimic an online experience are promising. "UI is the most important thing when it comes to mobile comunities. Ultimately it's going to be UI innovation that will drive market success."

AirG's own move to a Java-based embed experience in Q4 2005 produced a three-fold increase in session length, a 50 per cent increase in install base in Q1 2006 and pushed user numbers to more than 10 million. Compared to the WAP experience, users find it easier-to-use, faster and say it looks better.

On user-generated content, Gharamani gave the example of Kimbo Slice, a Miami-based illegal ‘Fight Club' boxer who put video of his fights on YouTube. In four months his videos were downloaded five million times and he became an instant celebrity - although it's all illegal of course. The popularity of this kind of content is undeniable but the swathe of complications - legal risks, privacy issues, copyright breaches, content management requirements - is an enormous issues for mobile operators because unlike a lot of UGC in the online space, consumers haven't disassociated the liabilities from the operators: "operators will be the first to get the blame if anything goes wrong". From the Kimbo Slice example: "Five million downloads x upset parents x calls to customer services = one expensive customer service issue".

He joked that if MySpace was advertising for a head of mobile, he'd apply...
- Fjord MD Mike Beeston: Given the choice between accessing a service on a PC or mobile, users can prefer the privacy and intimacy of a mobile interface for services like Flirtomatic, for example.

- Gunnar Larsen, director EMEA, Real Networks: "Trust is the issue here: people don't use mobile as an extension of online communities just because they don't trust the cost." Larsen also defined ‘casual games' as more female. Stuff like Tetris - "not the ones where you shoot things and blood splatters everywhere". Nice.

» @ MEX: Operators Move Away From Content - Big Media Moves In
Related Topics: MEX -- Permalink - Comments (0) [by jemima]

[by Jemima Kiss] A delegate piped up: Is mobile not an interesting enough space for ‘real' media companies? There are no ‘real' media companies here to ask, but maybe I'll put that to a few of them at the Association of Online Publishers drinks tonight...

The consensus here is that mobile operators are stepping back from creating content and trying to be a media brand in their own right. "A lot of operators went into this space with aspirations of becoming a big media company," said Lars Becker, COO of Player X. "But they've toned this down and looked at where they are making their money, and that means focusing on customer support. They understand it's very hard to build a media company that appeals to everyone."

On the other side of the fence, media companies are "red hot" in wanting to move into the mobile space and just have to mobilise their products.

» @ MEX: What Happens When Designers Listen To Customers
Related Topics: Handsets, MEX -- Permalink - Comments (0) [by jemima]

[by Jemima Kiss] Gus Desbarats of industrial design consultants Alloy said it's unthinkable that designers would produce a shampoo bottle and then complain when users couldn't work out how to use it. Alloy asked users what they thought about the trial Sky TV service through Vodafone. The tester says it's an interesting idea and is keen on watching snippets of mobile TV in his down time. But a few minutes later after some very sketchy images: "Oh. That's not good. It's like when you get on one of those dodgy porn sites and try and download stuff. Huh. If that's what streaming is then I'll never even think about getting it, let alone paying for it." He's been hoarding insights from users on their mobile services, like why a portrait-format screen would be taken up with so much menu clutter that it actually becomes a small landscape screen, like where users actually put a handset if they are watching video on it, and headsets - people hate them. Headphones with an iPod are different because the user chooses when to plug in, but users can't choose when they will get an incoming call. All these observations and definitions "power the design of the device". Again, users often refer back to the usability of their PCs where the hardware often goes unnoticed - the focus is on interaction through the screen.

Alloy's prototype is a clam-shell twin-screen model. Users don't like the main screen to be combined with a touchscreen pad because "you get grubby marks all over the TV you're watching" but the big advantage is that the touch screen menu can change according to the mode the phone is in. "Mechanical keypads offer significant restraints in the context of multimedia environments," he said. So the controls change from video mode to the camera function to the phone. It looks like a conventional phone but has other pleasing touches: the phone sits on its side with a 5 degree tilt to make it easier to view in TV mode, and it's also designed to sit comfortably in two hands unlike smaller handsets which bring the user's elbows too close together. (I hadn't thought about that before, but try it!). This design is modest but really impressive. Desbarats doesn't want this to be called a blue sky project because that "becomes about the designer's vision. This shouldn't look crazy to people - I want them to say ‘OK, right - I get it'."

Digital Rum launch Txt2Buy - Payments News

UK: HMV, Digital Rum Launch Txt2Buy Mobile Payments

In the UK, HMV and Digital Rum have announced a new mobile service that enables music, film fans and gamers to Txt2Buy CDs, DVDs and Games directly from their mobile phones. "The new Txt2Buy service allows consumers to respond immediately to HMV adverts appearing in the national and lifestyle press, using their credit/debit cards to buy products 'on the move' in a simple three step process over the mobile internet."

Unbanked figures for the US - Payments News

Underbanked Financial Services Market Exceeds $10 Billion

The "unbanked" and financially underserved population is making its mark in the economy in a market segment that now exceeds $10 billion, according to data compiled by Phoenix ESP Payments Research Group. Phoenix reports that although this below-the-radar group may not be using credit cards to make purchases, many are turning to pre-paid cards instead, fueling an opportunity for financial services firms and retailers.

Obopay at Payments News

Obopay Developing BREW Extension to Enable Mobile Payments

Obopay has announced that it will enable a new phone payment option for online retailers and BREW mobile application providers that provides merchants an easy and low-cost way to process mobile payment transactions and enables consumers to easily initiate purchases from their mobile phones with a simple touch of the keypad.