Posts Tagged ‘first data’

Is Nokia becoming Fox?

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

That’s one of the opened-ended questions posed by Kerrianne Gauld, Biz Dev at Smith & Williamson Corporate Finance on MoMoLondon this afternoon. Have a read:

Hi

I’m doing some research on the mobile advertising sector and wondered if anyone had any views on the sustainability of the sector. If the projected ad spend by 2013 will be $2bn and the revenues from mobile transactions will be $300bn won’t there need to be a huge shift in the technology/consumer culture/backoffice infrastructures to enable this to happen? There appears to be a number of issues between 3rd party developers, handset manufacturers, and network operators that will need to be settled before sufficient industry standards are in place to fully facilitate this boom.

Just looking at the proliferation of premium content/advertising networks that are springing up suggests that the marketplace is growing quickly, but I wonder how many of these firms are able to offer something that adds true value. Nokia bought Enpocket to help it ‘establish Nokia as a leader in Internet services’ and is continuing to make regular acquisitions along this path, including MOSH in June. Is Nokia becoming Fox?

I can see why the industry is excited, but I’m not sure whether it’s just hype or not.

Would anyone like to share their views? You can email me direct if you’d prefer not to post to all.

Cheers
Kerrianne

Kerrianne Gauld
Business Development
Smith & Williamson Corporate Finance

Kerrianne raises some interesting points. If you’re suffering from doubt and wondering if we’re walking through a hype-laden industry, here’s my patented 1-step hype detector process:

1. Is/Can/Will your mother using it?

If yes, you’re fine.

If no, you’re in Hypeville.

There are a range of players ready to plug the gaps — First Data is one of those that springs to mind when it comes to mobile transactions. However the mobile industry itself — and the mobile operators in particular — still can’t work out what day it is.

Today I’m a media company. Tomorrow I’m an internet services company. On Tuesday I’d like to flog you 40p/min cross network telecommunications services to call your granny. And on Wednesday I’m trying to become big in music.

And we move on.

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Posted in Mobile Commerce, Operators, Opinion | Comments

First Data’s GO-Tags — the first step toward mobile commerce?

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

The mobile industry has been WOEFULLY inept at dealing with mobile commerce.  Appalling.  There’s a heck of a lot of hesitation going on.

Only a few years ago, some mobile operators were doing their best to avoid getting anywhere near mobile commerce.  Now, as revenue plateaus and the data market is moving swiftly to flat rate — without any innovation — attention is most certainly turning to other ways of making money.

Want to wave your phone at the newsagent to pay for your newspaper?

Dream on.  It’s going to take a 500lb behemoth of a gorilla to step in and sort out the industry.

As it happens, we have that — in the form of First Data, one of the world’s largest merchant account processors.

They’ve come up with a solution that could, theoretically, be adopted tomorrow.  It’s called GO-Tag.  It’s a little sticker that you can put anywhere (think: Back of your mobile phone?) and you can use it much like an Oyster card (the RFID card system used for the London Underground train service).  Swipe at a reader and the relevant balance is debited from your account.  That could be your mobile phone account.  Or bank account, or Starbucks Coffee account. It wouldn’t take much of an imagination stretch for the likes of Vodafone to issue all its contract customers with a little GO-Tag each.  Put it on your phone, your coffee mug, your forehead… any time you use it, transactions are debited from your Vodafone account.

THAT would be excellent.

First Data have published a white paper about this — Contactless Payments: Consumer Trends and Usage Preferences (PDF).  If you’re anywhere into Near Field Communications, this is worth a look.  More about their GO-Tags here (PDF).

(via Payments News)

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Posted in Mobile Commerce, Operators | Comments

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