Giving the Finger to Mobile Wallets

Fifth Dimension recently commissioned a report into the state of mobile payments across the US and Eurozone*. Three key facts stand out:

1. Every 0.03 seconds a new mobile payment product/brand/start-up is announced
2. Every hour, over a billion trillion gazillion dollars is invested into the mobile payments industry
3. Every 72.4 days, somebody, somewhere, somehow, manages to successfully make a payment with a mobile wallet

Or something like that, anyway – I forget the actual figures. But the details aren’t important – what is important is that despite being touted as The Next Big Thing, mobile wallets might be the 21st Century payments equivalent of Betamax, and anyone jumping on the m-wallet bandwagon will soon realise it’s being pulled by a bunch of blind horses galloping towards a cliff edge… if New Jersey start-up PulseWallet have their way.

PulseWallet is bringing biometric payments to the Western masses. Their system’s simple: you stick your finger in a hole at the POS and a near-infrared LED scans the veins in your (registered) finger to establish your identity. And as a back up, just in case you forgot to bring your fingers out with you, their system also offers you the option to use a payment card.

I know what you’re thinking: that’s not very secure; all I need to do is cut off some mug’s finger and I’m quids-in, right? Wrong. Firstly, additional security is provided by the entry of a 4-digit PIN (which you can enter with any finger by the way, not just your favourite pre-registered one). Secondly, the LED maps the blood flowing through the veins of the finger, so if there’s no warm blood flowing, there’s no sale. Thirdly, if you’re about to pay for your weekly shop at Asda** and you pull out an unattached withered finger, you’re gonna get looks, aren’t you?

Apparently, PulseWallet’s finger vein mapping is more secure and reliable than fingerprint scanning, as accurate as iris scanning, and generally perceived as less invasive than either. Although currently in beta, their f-wallet*** will store all your credit and debit cards, along with loyalty cards, coupons and vouchers. PulseWallet co-founder, Matt Saricicek, reckons it’ll be ready to go in the States by this summer, pretty much. No idea when it’ll be available in the UK yet, which is a shame, because most days I’m lucky if I've thought to put trousers on, let alone remembered to grab cash and/or cards and/or mobile phone on the way out.

*We excluded Asia Pacific from our research because they’re still using sea shells, glass beads and human skulls to pay with on many of the smaller atolls, and in Japan you can purchase used underwear from vending machines with an NFC chip directly implanted into the tongue; stuff like this would’ve really messed up our graphs.

**Notice I didn’t use Tesco in that example; they’re probably still a bit touchy about random mystery meat turning up in-store.

***I just made up that term, but feel free to use it if you like, PulseWallet people.

2012: Our Year in Numbers. And Pictures. And Words.

Everyone loves an infographic - am I right? Well here's one we prepared earlier to show off our performance with prepaid cards. Enjoy.

If you want help with your payments programme ....get in contact!

MasterCard rePower launches in UK

This month saw the launch of MasterCard rePower®, the service that lets cardholders reload their prepaid MasterCard cards with cash. The service is provided by our client CQR Payments, with the front-end website designed and built by Fifth Dimension.

MasterCard rePower allows consumers to load cash
onto their prepaid card via the MasterCard rePower website.

Cardholders buy Ukash vouchers from thousands of participating retailers and enter their unique voucher codes into the website at www.mastercardrepower.com to instantly top-up their MasterCard prepaid cards.

The cash load process is quick, convenient and secure and provides financial inclusion to a significant number of people that would otherwise not be afforded the ability to pay with plastic. The cash reload service is currently available in the UK, with roll-out to other European countries in the very near future. The Kalixa Card is the first prepaid card that can be loaded in the UK via the MasterCard rePower service. 

Matt Lanford Head of Prepaid at MasterCard Europe added: 

"By enabling cash electronification to take place at a far wider range of merchants or online, MasterCard is creating a series of environments where prepaid can be disruptive to the normal flow of cash in our society and where those people bound to cash can take advantage of the security, convenience and control offered by prepaid."

For more information, read our MasterCard rePower case study or visit www.mastercardrepower.com

Failure Is Not An Option

We’re very pleased to announce that our recent work for UNICEF UK, the UK presence of the world’s leading children’s organisation, is now live at www.unicef.org.uk.

We were asked to increase the impact and effectiveness of UNICEF UK’s campaigns online, and optimise the donor journey to increase the rate and value of donations. The project encompassed a reworking of UNICEF UK’s home page and content pages, with a focus on the donation page variations.

We built flexible page templates using EPiServer CMS 6, which allowed UNICEF UK’s web editors to create bespoke customised donation pages using a suite of dynamic components. We designed these components to tap into UNICEF UK’s live campaign data, specifically to leverage the power behind the psychology of charitable giving which, although sharing some similarities to the persuasive techniques we use to guide our work in the commercial payments sector, is considerably different – and much more complex.

We boiled down our knowledge and research into a 37-point checklist of psychological principals, which we then combined with another (considerably longer) checklist of usability, design and technical principles, to inform all content, layout and functionality. The resulting elements give UNICEF UK’s website editors a variety of complimentary tools with which to create, test and learn, with the goal of improving the effectiveness of their donation pages with each successive iteration.

We’re extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with such an important organisation, and we’re proud of our work on unicef.org.uk. We enjoyed being pushed both creatively and technically, driven even harder than usual by the fact that the consequences of delivering an inferior solution were significantly more disastrous than the loss of a client or not being paid.

Visit www.unicef.org.uk to experience the donor journey first-hand and make a donation, or read our case study which explains the project in more detail. On second thoughts, forget the case study – just go and make a donation!

Yet another Mobile POS: Adyen

It's another week, so yet another article on a Mobile POS system - this time from the gigaom.com website look at how Adyen's Shuttle compares against existing devices from iZettle and Payleven.

Yet another Mobile POS: Adyen's Shuttle

The interesting point is that Adyen is not aiming at the small business and sole traders that the likes of iZettle and Payleven are targetting, but the larger business. They are also looking to white label the product which they can do due to their end-to-end payment processing, and so are not reliant on banking partners.

We've previously highlighted our concerns over the issue of consumer trust in these devices. But that can be alleviated through greater exposure and resultant familiarity to the product, coupled with a brand that they trust. Being able to deliver larger volumes of units will help with the former, and white labelling the latter.

But if there's one thing we can be certain of...the space around Mobile POS is only going to get more crowded, not less.

Read the full article on the gigaom website