Is Barclaycard PayTag stealing a march on PayPal

In their post on Friday, the Tamebay website suggests that PayTag, the NFC sticker solution from Barclaycard was getting one over on PayPal by getting consumers used to the idea of paying with their mobile phone - though clearly, the user has to make the connection of actually fixing the sticker to their mobile.

Barclays PayTag is not really a mobile contactless payment
option ...it's basically just a sticker

It's all part of the hotbed of discussion that is NFC - will it, won't it ...and so often biased towards whatever Apple say or do. While Barclays have clearly been championing NFC with their contactless TV campaign, and following on with PayTag, it seems a great shame that they couldn't actually follow this through with a real mobile NFC product.

 
The PayTag solution is so limited and lacks any sophisticiation that will actually drive the desire behind NFC adoption. Fortunately there are products coming to the market over the coming weeks that will allow genuine mobile NFC payments, providing the consumer with genuine benefits, such as access to their account, person to person payments and the ability to switch the NFC payment capability off and on when required.

So while we would congratulate Barclays on their advocacy of contactless payments, i can't help thinking that PayTag is not really delivering.

Read the original Tamebay article at: http://tamebay.com/2012/11/barclaycard-paytag-for-offline-payments.html

Card payments on your mobile - no hardware required

Mobile payments company Flint, has recently come to the end of its Beta. If you don't know who Flint are, but are weary with hearing of yet another "mobile payments" company, then think again ...Flint have a twist on the landscape as they read the card numbers of the payment card via the mobiles camera phone. No additional hardware needed!

Flint can take card payments on your mobile, without
the need for any additional hardware

 Given the fiddliness of carrying around a dongle as per the solutions from Square, iZettle, MPowa, Payleven (shall we go on...) then Flint really have a point of difference.

Yet, we still can't help raising the concern that more than the other solutions, this is going to face a huge amount of consumer trust issues - how keen will the average cardholder be on having his credit, debit, prepaid card being photographed by a stranger?

We said it before, but the technology may not be the barrier here. A great idea, but we'll be watching to see how and if it can take off.

Cardless or Cashless - which will be first?

Speaking to the Prague Post, Matt Lanford, MasterCard's Head of Prepaid Products in Europe talks about prepaid cards being influential in the rise of a cashless society, but that it is unlikely we will reach a cashless society within the next 5 years.

Matt Lanford, Head of Prepaid Products, Europe, MasterCard

 Given our current use of cash, then its hard to disagree with that sentiment - especially when you consider that in 2011, 55% of payments in the UK were made with cash according to the Payments Council.

With the increase of digital wallets, virtual cards and mobile payments then it would seem more probable that we will see a cardless society before we see a cashless one. The speed at which we reach a cardless society is likely to be influenced by technical redundancy and adoption of common standards.

We've recently seen a number of high profile technical failures in the payments industry (such as RBS / Natwest) and consumers will need to be convinced that with an increasing push towards digital only payment methods, that they can still access their money and make payments when they want.

But we also need to see commonality over formats and standards for new digital payments. The consumer doesn't want to have multiple digital wallets / payment methods, and the merchant will not want to have to integrate with multiple methods either.

To achieve that, if digital wallets essentially provide access to MasterCard / Visa / Amex payments, then it raises another prevelant question for the industry - how to earn money from delivering payments?

Read the full interview with Matt Lanford with the Prague Post: Prepaid cards usher in the rise of a cashless society - Business - The Prague Post

Payleven announce chip & PIN solution for mobile payments

This week we saw mobile Payleven announce the launch of their chip & PIN solution for mobile payment acceptance. If the number of market entrants is any indication, then mobile point of sale (POS) is clearly a growing area, but it is unlikely to take off without chip & PIN: currently VISA is not preparing to accept mobile payments without chip & pin, so any entrant to the market that can only accept MasterCard really has their work cut out.

Payleven's mobile payment acceptance

With a crowded space, then all the players are trying to establish their position in the market – Payleven’s release announcing them as the “first pan-European mobile payments company with Chip & PIN”.  But the detail of the release indicates they will only be accepting registrations from 15th October – so not much difference to mPowa?

We’re still interested to see how consumers will respond to mobile POS – in our own trials, less than 10% were willing to entertain using their card to make a payment through a mobile phone. While Chip & PIN is intended to offer greater security around the payment process, we must consider that the consumer may be even more reluctant to enter their PIN in a mobile device.

For the market to fulfil the potential expected by the mobile payment  providers, then the issue may not be one of technology solutions, but of establishing consumer confidence in the technology.

Departed friends

It is with great regret that we announce that Simon's wife Andrea passed away this week. Simon first started working for Fifth Dimension in the late '90s and he and Andrea were very much an "item" then. They ultimately married and had a beautiful daughter Ella before Andrea was sadly diagnosed with cancer. She bravely battled against it and received the all clear in 2008, after which the family moved to Ireland.

Regrettably she was not successful in battling a second round which emerged in 2011 and passed away this week. Our thoughts are with Simon, Ella and family.

There will be a local service in Ruislip, England on Wednesday 19th September and donations in lieu of flowers have been requested to Macmillan Cancer Support: http://www.justgiving.com/andrea-edmondson

We hope that the many clients and colleagues of Simon will wish to show their support at this time.