Category Archives: Mobile

Collection of Mobile Payment Concept Videos from Google, Visa, MC, PayPal, ISIS…

Lots of movements in the mobile payment field in the last few months – just this past week PayPal demo’d their plan to push PayPal into the physical world, and we saw from Google/MasterCard’s Google Wallet in action again.

I thought it’s time to pull together some of these awesome concept videos that are coming out.  Here’s a list of my favorite ones.

PayPal’s “Future of Shopping”:

ISIS’s mobile wallet:

Visa Digital Wallet:

MasterCard’s “QkR” demo:

Google Wallet in action:

Bonus: Google Wallet + George Costanza!:

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Visa getting into the location-based game… via SMS!

There are a few things that I think will really take off in the next year or so -

1) Some sort of alternative payment provider – PayPal has had it’s fun, everyone’s trying to get in on their turf

2) NFC capabilities – not just for payment, but for loyalty programs

3) Local + Group buying.

It appears that after the Amex/4sq deal from earlier this year, Visa is getting into the game too.  With the latest GAP partnership, “Gap Mobile 4 u“, Visa will be sending out location-based offers based on where the card holder is spending.  Your spending behavior will then trigger messages sent by Visa, which will contain coupons/offers which you can then show the cashier at check-out.

This is a very smart move from Visa from a few angle:

1) This will have much bigger international implication than perhaps in the U.S.  People around the world are still mostly on SMS and not smartphone + apps.

2) SMS is just simple to use – no need to download, etc.

3) This will allow Visa to scale really quickly – without having to create special relationships with different partners.  It is possible for Visa to just open up the program and allow merchants to implement this easily.

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Sprint and Clearwire announce $1 billion WiMAX agreement – all’s right in the WiMAX land!

This only took FOREVER to happen.  After Sprint and Clearwire “parted ways” a while back, it would appear the two sides have finally came back together as one big happy family.  Sprint will be investing $1B in Clearwire, giving Clearwire the funding it needs and Sprint the bandwidth it needs.  Under the agreement, Sprint and Clearwire will also be allow to sell each other’s 3G + 4G networks to third parties.  Crazy right? This means that they can both sell to whoever they want – I’m sure they will plan it strategically so that one’s targeting a market the other’s not – or for large markets, have both go in at the same time to penetrate the market with WiMAX.

This is interesting also what with the evolution / adoption of LTE in the United States.  What does this mean for Clearwire / WiMAX / Sprint? I know Clearwire has also been evaluating integrating LTE into its WiMAX networks.. but how will that work? Is it just a matter of back-end integration with no disruptions to consumers? Or will consumers need to switch out say, a new device, for the adoption?

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