PayPal initiatives across remote and in-store payments

Taken from The Juniper Research Blog: PayPalOneTouch provides further fillip to mobile shopping

PayPal unveiled an app payment feature, which enables uses to pay via a single touch to the handset screen. The "OneTouch" has been enabled using technology from Braintree, which parent company eBay acquired in September 2013 for around $800 million.

The feature will also be integrated into mobile apps which support PayPal. In the first instance that the consumer makes a payment for a product using one of these apps, he or she will be redirected to the PayPal app for authorization. For subsequent purchases, the one touch feature kicks in and purchases can be made within the merchant app.

PayPal is already one of the behemoths of mobile payments: in 2013, it was responsible for around $27 billion in mobile and tablet transactions, representing 15% of global payments by transaction value, and the introduction of this feature on a commercial basis is likely to give those volumes a further boost.

Furthermore, not content with being a big fish in the online payments space, PayPal updated its Windows Phone app to enable in-store payments, to accompany the iOS and Android apps which have had this facility since 2012. Last autumn, it also unveiled an in-store payment mechanism, enabled by a combination of BLE and Wi-Fi. The PayPal Beacon runs on its own Wi-Fi and plugs into an outlet at a retailer with a compatible POS system. When a consumer who (a) has the PayPal app and (b) has opted in to the ability for retailers to use Beacon enters a store, the technology triggers a vibration or sound to denote a successful check-in; the handset owner’s photograph appears on the screen of the merchant POS system so that the customer can be greeted by name.

PayPal have said that if a consumer enters a store and either does not wish to check in or ignores the check in request, no information will be transmitted. The customer set up preferences as to where they can be automatically checked in and then automatically charged when collecting goods or when they leave; payment requires only a verbal confirmation.

In short, PayPal continues to be a very busy bee across remote and in-store payments. Its competitors will have to up their games to keep up.

Gartner’s Digital Business Development Path

Taken from Forbes article "Where are you on the Digital Business Development Path?"

The Digital Business Development Path examines six different business era models from before the Web to after the Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud, information) to help organizations understand their current state and assist CIOs in making the case for digital business.

Gartner’s Digital Business Development Path

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 75% of business will be digital businesses or preparing to become one. However, a Gartner digital business survey showed that only 22% of respondents defined themselves as already being a digital business. Most organizations, or 41%, see themselves as a digital marketing business, and 22% of companies remain Web businesses.

Where is your organization today and where do you want it to be ?

Ooredoo heralds commercial launch in Myanmar

By Mary Lennighan, Total Telecom
Friday 15 August 2014

Qatari operator enables users to top up from as little as €0.76 (Rp 11,879) as its mobile services go live.

Ooredoo announced the official launch of mobile services in Myanmar, introducing a number of low-cost top-up and Internet access options.

An Ooredoo SIM card costs 1,500 kyats (€1.13 , Rp 13,422) and customers are able to top up in amounts as low as MMK1,000 (€0.76, Rp 11,879). Top-up vouchers are available at 30,000 locations in Myanmar, Ooredoo said.

It is also offering a series of starter plans to help customers get online.

Its mobile Internet bundles start at MMK500 (€0.38, Rp 5,940 ) per day and include what it describes as "a Facebook bonus", which presumably gives users free or lower-priced access to Facebook.

The telco also offers Chat Packs at MMK100 (€0.08, Rp 1,250 ) per day, which enable customers to "chat online non-stop".

The company is also talking up the availability of the Samsung Galaxy V, which it is offering for a promotional price with a bundle of voice minutes, SMS and data.

Indonesia The Leading Country for Digital Ad Spending Growth

According to eMarketer, investments in digital advertising in Asia-Pacific are set to rise 17.9% to total $41.07 billion this year. The region will boast the second-biggest share of digital ad spending worldwide, trailing only North America, at 29.3% vs. 38.8%.

With investments in online and mobile advertising totaling $18.96 billion this year, China will maintain the largest share of the region’s digital ad market (46.2%) followed by Japan and Australia.

Indonesia will be the leading country for digital ad spending growth by a long shot, at a whopping 75.0% this year, compared with 30.0% in second-place India. This growth will pay off to surpass India in 2017 and near South Korea by 2018.

Monetizing mobile apps through API

From McKinsey Insight :
Monetizing mobile apps: Striking the right balance

Mobile apps are becoming big business. Analysts estimate that app-related revenues reached $25 billion last year to $70 billion by 2017.

A small but growing portion of app revenues comes from application programming interfaces (APIs) —gateways that, enable third-party app developers to leverage a company’s aggregated data or selected services.

APIs are generating revenues in one of three ways for the companies that choose to contribute their data.

1. Pay-per-use model (43% market share), a company makes its transactional data available to third party apps.

2. Subscription models (38%), fees accrue during a subscription period.

3. Resource-usage and revenue-sharing models (19%), generate sales of a company’s own products, from which the app developer too gets a cut.

Apple Mobile Payment Initiatives

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/24/apple-mobile-payments/13092217/

There is new speculation that Apple will venture into mobile payments, that currently in talks with Visa and other credit card companies for partnership.

The new service would allow users to pay for physical goods on the web, in apps and in retail stores, turning the iPhone act as direct line of payment for credit card companies.

This will skipping fees normally paid to third-party payment processors and run the system without giving up control to wireless carriers.

Its system would involve a secured element in the phones to store sensitive information (phone owner's financial credentials) and utilize Touch ID to authorize payments with Apple's Passbook app acting as a virtual "wallet" to hold the credit cards. Apple is also expected to leverage over 800 million iTunes accounts.

Forrester Research estimates that Americans will spend $90 billion through mobile payments by 2017, up from $12.8 billion in 2012.

Strategy Building Blocks

Dikutip dari artikel McKinsey Quarterly  dengan judul 

"Mastering the building blocks of strategy"

Increase your likelihood of developing effective strategies through an approach that’s thorough, action-oriented, and comfortable with debate and ambiguity.

October 2013 | byChris Bradley, Angus Dawson, and Antoine Montard

...

The five core building blocks are book-ended by two others. One is an initial block (frame) to ensure that the team properly identifies and agrees to both the questions asked and the decisions made as the strategy is developed. The final block (evolve) is dedicated to the constant monitoring and refreshing of the strategy as conditions change and new information becomes available.

One central building block is deep insight into the starting position of the company: where and why it creates—or destroys—value (diagnose). Executives also need a point of view on how the future may unfold (forecast). By combining insights into a company’s starting position with a perspective on the future, the company can develop and explore alternative ways to win (search) and ultimately decide which alternative to pursue (choose). With the strategy selected, the company needs to create an action plan and reallocate resources to deliver it (commit).