Consumers gravitate to convenience. That's as true with payment technologies as it is with anything else. A prime example is the decades-old trend away from cash or checks and toward credit cards.
Now, the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets has set the stage for a new move — away from fixed-point, card-based transactions and toward those completed on mobile. The old dream of the "digital wallet" is coming true in a very particular mobile-led fashion.
There are a few things people are concerned about online shopping, be it their credit card information being at risk, the security of their mobile transaction, or not being able to get a refund if the item they purchased is unsatisfactory.
Others may not be able to use their local credit card on a website. This is why there are online international payment services like PayPal which makes it easy to send, receive and even request for money across borders.
Every time I talk to a group of business owners, sooner or later someone asks me about late- or non-payers. I've had only one of these in the last 10 years but I know that that has been more due to luck than good judgement.
So what should you do if you find that clients or customers regularly pay late--or that some don't pay at all?
Mobile is taking over the scene. Smartphones and tablets are bringing along this revolution, and our lives are becoming more intertwined with technology as a result. The term “mobile payment” actually has a number of different meanings. To some, NFC (near field communications) comes to mind. NFC is a relatively new payment option that allows users to wave either a card or mobile device in front of a sensor that will automatically process a payment for you. A lack of NFC sensors in the market has ultimately hindered the development of this payment method, but it could take off at any time.
At an event today at MWC, Visa announced a partnership with Samsung that will result in its payWave mobile wallet app getting installed on the "next generation" of Samsung smartphones. PayWave will work with the NFC chip on those devices to enable mobile payments, but Visa says it's agnostic about exactly which credit cards get used with the app. It's part of the "Visa Ready Program," which lets all sorts of companies connect to Visa's network of payment systems — not just banks, but manufacturers and carriers as well. In that vein, Visa says that it's offering future Samsung customers the ability to hook up any Visa card to the secure NFC element in their smartphones for mobile payments.
PayWave is actually able to accomodate cards other than Visa cards, a technology that the company had actually licensed to both Google for Wallet and ISIS, even though had Visa suggested that the other major credit card companies would be on their own when it comes to getting their payment solutions on to Samsung's phones. Google Wallet, by comparison, currently allows users to use any card with its app.
Remember those rumors that YouTube was working on rolling out some paid subscription channels? According to Android Police, code in the recently updated YouTube app shows that Pay-To-View is in the works. It's just a matter of when.
Paypal’s mobile small business payment service, Paypal Here, is on its way to the Europe. It’ll be introduced in the UK first, with excursions into the continent coming at a later date.
Paypal Here launched last year in the US and several other countries, but they’ve had to overcome the gap between simpler magnetic strip system and the Chip and Pin system that is standard in the Eurozone. Magnetic strip are much easier to manage but are also considered less secure, according to Reuters.
Apple has paid out a total of $8 billion to App Store developers, Apple CEO Tim Cook said at Goldman Sachs' Technology and Internet conference yesterday.
Last month, Apple announced that it had paid $7 billion to developers for their apps. So in a little over one month, Apple paid out an additional $1 billion.
We’ve heard it before… this is going to be the year that mobile payments will boom! Both Gartner and Forrester have made strong predictions of mobile growth, with Forrester recently saying that the U.S. mobile payments market will hit $90 billion by 2017, a 48% compound annual growth rate from the $12.8 billion spent in 2012.
But how do we know that 2013 is really the year that “mobile wallets” will finally take off? And what will things look like when mobile payments actually fulfill their promise?
AdAge is reporting than in an effort to lure more content producers (along with the subsequent viewers and advertisers that follow) away from traditional television, YouTube is supposedly getting ready to launch paid subscription on specific channels.
The subscriptions won't be too pricey—at least for right now. Based on applications YouTube has reportedly asked a small group of unnamed channels to submit, the first group of paid channels will probably somewhere between $1 and $5 a month.
Everything is going mobile in this world and the world of computers is coming to an end slowly but steadily. Of course the transition into handheld devices will not occur completely but it will be the preferred medium for almost everything we usually do on our computers. There are 6 billion mobile phone users in the world and an astonishing three quarters of the world have access to a cellphone. With e-commerce booming, mobile billing systems are becoming more and more sophisticated and this list discuses ten mobile payment services for your business.
Knowing your data plan can mean the difference between a normal cell phone bill and a heart attack. 1 in 6 mobile phone customers have experienced some degree of bill shock. 50% of those were hit with charges of $50 or more. This infographic, provided by Xigo, explores the most insane cases of bill shock and how to avoid this happening to you.
t’s hard to say how serious this is right now, but Yahoo was ordered to pay $2.7 billion in a lawsuit related to a breach of contract and lost profits of a yellow pages listing service by Worldwide Directories and Ideas Interactivas.
In a statement and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Silicon Valley Internet giant said it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals.”
We lobbed a call into Yahoo to get more details about the “non-final” judgment from the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City — not that the company’s PR will actually call back on important multi-billion matters — but here is the company’s SEC filing...
Bank of America has joined the mobile payment crowd and announced their version of the Square or PayPal Here mobile credit card processor. The Bank of America offering is called Mobile Pay on Demand and similar to the others, will include a card reader that works with iOS and Android. More specifically, Bank of America has the support listed as being the iPhone, iPad and Android.
According to Bank of America, Mobile Pay on Demand is perfect for those with “few” transactions per day, for those looking to accept payments in person and with an average sale amount under $2,000. Otherwise, Mobile Pay on Demand allows the user to pay as they go with no monthly fees. In other words, just like the competitors.
Bank of America will provide the mobile card reader for free and charge just 2.7 percent per swipe. And for those looking for comparison, that is just a tiny bit under the 2.75 percent charged by Square. Bank of America did not offer a timeline of how quick your money will fund, however they do mention that “instant authorization ensures fast funding for you.”
Entrepreneurs thrive on coming up with the big ideas. We live for turning a seemingly abstract vision into reality, connecting with potential partners, selling prospects on our new idea. Where we tend to drag our heels is when it comes to managing our finances.
Expense reports? Forget it. The best-case scenario is a shoebox of jumbled receipts. Billing clients promptly? One would hope, but doubtful. We are way to busy to worry about getting paid. Dealing with confusing payment systems? Not going to happen in this lifetime!
Based on my own battles with bookkeeping, I know that anything you can do to simplify the process the better. Thankfully, technology has come a long way since I started my first business over a decade ago. Here are a few tech tools and apps to help you get paid...
Pandora wants you to know that Pandora is good for music because it pays artists millions and millions of dollars for their songs. Take Drake and Lil Wayne, they get nearly $3 million each a year. And Pandora wants to pay them more.
According to Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, Pandora will pay over two thousand artists $10,000 each over the next 12 months. Yeah it's not a milli a milli for every artist but that's still a solid chunk of change! The top dogs in music obviously get a lot of money:
If you’ve ever come across a client (or 20) who refuses to pay you what you know you’re worth, you might start to think that there’s no one out there who knows the value of good design. And you’re definitely not alone – so many designers compete on price that those who want to compete on quality often feel left out.
It’s been in our minds and thoughts to keep our wallets and money bags safe. For decades, people have not given up worrying about safeguarding anything that is MONEY. Everyone of us are undoubtedly careful while on making huge money transactions. At some instant, we might also tend to think that if something goes wrong with the transaction or if the cash has not been transferred, so and so. However, an online payment system wouldn’t bother you much on this, since the transactions made via these systems are acknowledged to be secure and trust-worthy. Right from the launch of these systems, they happen to be the perfect tool for any transaction that is made online. There are a plenty of online payment systems offered, among which Paypal, Google Checkout are among the popular and best used criteria. In this post, I’ve pulled the top 5 online payment system tools which can be trusted in every way.
Working as a freelancer undoubtedly has wonderful perks and advantages – like being able to take on a job in the convenience of your own home and having more free time for yourself.
However, there’s always the worry of not receiving payment, particularly when working with clients who are thousands of miles away.
When customers come to the register to pay for their meal or purchases, many can now simply hold up their mobile phones instead of handing over dollar bills or pulling out a credit card. Since mobile payment programs are relatively inexpensive and don’t require sophisticated technical knowledge to implement, many small businesses have been quick to adopt the new technology.
