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With several possible alternatives to make contactless payments work, it remains to be seen which alternative will be adopted.

Contactless cards for example have had moderate success for various reasons (link to own article). And phones with SIM cards with NFC technology are slow to break through. This is mainly because of the disagreements over the fees that are attached to them. Card-issuers want to store data on the users phone, but they need the cooperation of the mobile network operators to do this.

Possible ways around these problems might be NFC stickers or to integrate a micro SD card in the phone, which excludes the MNOs.

But these as well are no easy solutions. Instead of answering which would be the best PaymentViews shines some light from a different angle: why should any data be put on the phone?

A company which has embrac…

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World Cards Intelligence (WCI) is a research report by the Lafferty Group on the payments market in over 65 countries. Below are some of the highlights about the Brazilian payment market.

• As the largest and most densely populated country in Latin America, Brazil should be a key market for any internationally ambitious credit card issuer, although competition is fierce and the market is dominated by five players. The combined share of the top-five bank issuers has grown consistently to 85 percent of all bank credit cards in issue. For international players to succeed in the market, they need a highly-focused strategy via joint ventures with a high-profile partner, or to conduct large-scale acquisitions.

• The Brazilian credit cards market continues to grow at a very healthy rate, with significant growth potential from the remaining u…

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In previous posts we have covered the battle that will occur in between most markets between mobile network operators and banks. In China a project involving mobile contactless payments has been started up. Mainly because in this case the Chinese bank card association isn’t included in this project. China Mobile takes the lead in this deployment.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how the banks will fight back.

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The amount of cellphones and greater familiarity of users with text messaging make SMS one of the most adopted technologies. Its ease of use convinces many people to try out certain services by SMS such as paying for parking services. But consumers don’t trust every business to bill them on their cellphone.

Recent relief efforts for Haiti have shown that people do in fact give for charity with their cell phones.

So is the problem just trust?

With the increasing popularity of games on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, a whole new industry has emerged. In these games, it is possible to buy virtual goods that help you advance in the game. These goods, of course need to be paid. Companies such as Boku, Zong or Mpayy deliver these services to make easy online payments charged to your credit card.

As more people get comfo…

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With 66 millions contactless cards by MasterCard and tens of millions more by Visa, contactless payments are possible all around the world. Although the technology is well distributed in certain parts of the world, actual transaction volumes have been low.

Two main reasons are responsible for that:

On the consumer side there is a lack of knowledge about the technology. People might have cards equipped with wireless possibilities without knowing what to do with them. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and card issuers, mainly banks, to educate the customer about the new options on their bank cards.

On the side of the retailers the infrastructure is not always present. Although there are contactless readers in the market, it requires an extra investment. One that does not always weigh up against the gained benefits from addin…

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On this blog we have already talked about the battle between mobile network operators and banks over control of the mobile payments market. This article at NFC World mentions the most important factors that will decide the outcome. All of these factors are characteristics of the market or the companies active in this market.

• Companies strength in its core market.
• Customer loyalty.
• The level of risk it is willing to take in terms of investing in the deployment of NFC services.
• How successful it is in developing an attractive business proposition for potential key service providers and how quickly it manages to sign them up.

As said before, these characteristics depend on the different players and the maturity of the market (developed vs developing).

This means that there is no one solution for the whole world. In every country th…

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There are many smart phone readers out there that have the possibility to capture credit cards such as VeriFone Payware. In most cases extra hardware is added to the phone so cards can be swiped. One of these readers, called morphie, adds an extra layer to make the phone a more complete POS terminal.

In the hardware that is used to swipe cards, NFC (Near Field Communication) technology is integrated. Which allows contactless payments on the device. When a card is brought in proximity of the device, the data are transferred to an application on the smart phone, where the transaction can be completed.

Right now it is only possible for cards that are equipped with FeliCa technology, which powers the built-in contactless reader. FeliCa is popular in Asia and has 100 million mobile phones and more than 120 million transportation and elect…

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Mobile payments, and more particularly the ones that pay for purchases on the web are still not adopted in the established markets.

“Consumers who want to pay for content are more likely to do so via a simple payment system requiring many fewer keystrokes than credit card entry on the fixed internet. eBay’s PayPal could be particularly suited to the mobile internet.”

But many of the initiatives do not see the wanted adoption by the consumers due to various reasons. In this article the possibilities for social networking site Facebook are explained. With its 350+ million users and a feature like Facebook Connect, it has the user base to launch such an product. Security will be a big challenge as recent issues don’t immediately convince consumers to trust them with their money. In that area PayPal has a better reputation.

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Short messages that inform the world what you are up to. This new service sounds a lot like Twitter but the biggest difference is that Blippy shows what you are buying and where and how much you are spending on it. Once you sign in on the webpage and link your credit card to the site, your purchases on certain sites (Amazon, iTunes, Zappos.com) will start showing up on your personal page. Other users can see these and comment on it. There is also an option to hide some of your purchases, some might be too private to share with the world. Russ Jones on PaymentViews

“Merchants know, for example, what you buy, but don’t know who you are. Banks that issue cards know who you are, and where you shop, but don’t know what you buy. The payment networks see their branded transactions, but don’t have any idea what they represent. And because there…

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Card companies are looking for new ways to grow their business. And as taking away business from their credit or debit card divisions would mean taking money out of their own pockets, they are looking to take on that eternal rival, cash.

Hello PayWave and PayPass, the contactless payment solutions from respectively Visa and Mastercard. The main selling points of this technology are ease of use and faster transactions.

Fact: The customer doesn’t like to get out his credit card for small purchases. Waving you card or even your card inside your wallet over some device definitely makes things easier.

But it is not only the consumer that needs to be convinced of the technology. Many retailers doubt the profitability of this extra way of paying. Because for them each time a customer pays with contactless, they will pay a transaction fee, …

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The number of ways in which you can pay with your mobile phone keeps growing. Many people predict that this will be the year of the mobile breakthrough in all sorts of domains. But why in 2010 and not last year? Was it technology? Were the different players were not ready? Or was the public not ready? In this article we will explore the various issues that stand in the way of mobile payment adoption.

Mobile payments can be done using three main methods: through prepaid cards, billing to the mobile carrier bill or a phone number linked to a (credit) card. This for both commercial activities and person-to-person payments. Despite these interesting possibilities, it seems that the general public has little notion of them. It might be up to the parties involved to educate the people in using this technology, and promoting its existence.

A…

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Recent coverage on mobile payments includes a lot of new products or applications for the iPhone. But smartphones are not the essence of the mobile payment market. The big opportunities lie in the emerging markets where a large part of the population does not have a bank account, but does own a mobile phone.

India is a much mentioned example in many markets, but here all eyes are on East-Africa. Kenya seems an odd example but it has a mobile payment system with a large adoption. The facts provided by Digital Money Forum illustrate this:

• 8.3 million registered customers, this corresponds with 40% of Kenya’s adult population
• USD 300 million per month in person-to-person (P2P) transfers. On a yearly basis this roughly equals 10% of Kenyan gross domestic product (GDP).
• Not only just a break through for person-to-person payments, also…

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The last two weeks the site PYMNTS has featured an article series on the The Decade’s 12 Greatest Developments in Payments. It is not finished yet, it has been an interesting read. Although there is a lot of focus on the American market, there are some trivia and good insights for all.

Our picks in the series: Magstripe and Credit card processing

As it will be a long weekend the whole series can probably get you through!

See you in 2010!

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A new company called Tapwallet is about to release a new payment service. The system uses the dock connector on the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch together with an own application. There has not been much information released, but the company posted some videos.

These videos illustrate a couple of possible applications for their payment solution. The first one is TapPay. Let’s say you want to pay in a restaurant, the check arrives with a 2D QR code printed on it. The consumer can then proceed to pay by taking a photograph of the code with his iPhone. An application will automatically convert the code and request payment confirmation. To get this code on the check some kind of modification in the point of sale system, maybe extra software by TapWallet.

The second example also uses a QR code. It implies that all of the customer’s cards have b…