After being purchased by eBay and focussing that auction market for several years, Paypal is getting back to its roots.  Banks should worry about this. Third Screen: PayPal goes mobile – Mar. 6, 2006 “It’s reasonable to think that PayPal will be offering mobile payment services through mobile devices and text messages to its customers,” says Schatt. “It’s a logical extension to what they do, and they’re well-positioned to do it. They’ve got a secure and trusted payment system which will make it possible to pay on the go.” Unfortunately for Banks and credit card acquirers, this move will disintermediate … Continue reading Banks beware – Paypal is starting to wake up

The convergence of phones, electronic wallets, and payments must only be a matter of time.  Of critical importance, will be the password methodology to ensure even if the phone is stolen it can’t be used by the bad guy. NTT DoCoMo, Mizuho tie up for phone credit card TOKYO, March 4 (Reuters) – NTT DoCoMo Inc , Japan’s largest mobile phone operator, will tie up with Mizuho Bank and Credit Saison Co. Ltd. to start a service allowing mobile phones to be used as credit cards, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Saturday. In an agreement that the paper said … Continue reading NTT DoCoMo, Mizuho tie up for phone credit card

Payments is being narrowly defined by US Bankers in particular as “electronification of cheques”, and this article confirms that view.  In the US cheques are still prevalent, so there is a need to automate cheque’s but I believe to narrowly define payments and payment strategy in this way is to miss an opportunity, and strategic threat.  The narrow view will “pave the cowpath”, and be driven by regulation, specifically Check 21.  Current processes will be replaced by electronic ones.  Whereas the broader view will accomplish Check 21, yet ensure that processes, and methods are re-engineered. Banking Strategies Blog : Where’s … Continue reading Where’s the Vision for Banks in Payments? (still missing the point …)

I got quite excited when saw this article and thought I was going to get a well articulated view from a Central Banker on the role of payments as a business.  Wrong! Turns out, he thinks payments means to automate paper processes.  Huh … thats obviously important and his views on Check 21 and ACH are valid, certainly for the US market, where those rules apply. Bank Systems & Technology : Pay It Forward The financial services industry is slowly beginning to realize that the payments business, once relegated to the back office, instead should have a place front and … Continue reading Payments as a business – well, kind of …

Here is the latest official information from Google on their payments capabilities. They will use the Google Account as the base for your information. Official Google Blog: An update on payments As the number of Google services has increased, we’ve continued to build on our core payment features and migrate to a standard process for people to buy our services with a Google Account. Examples of this migration include enabling users to buy Google Video content, Google Earth licenses, and Google Store items with their Google Accounts. We also just began offering similar functionality on Google Base. Continue reading Google Payments

This post at Techcrunch, identifies the latest moves by Google in the payments space. TechCrunch » Exclusive Look At Google Payments is to compete directly with eBay by not only allowing sellers to post items to base, but also by facilitating the transaction through Google Payments (see this blog post on purchasing via Base from the Google Base team). Continue reading Google starts to compete with eBay

Excellent piece here reminds us of the pre dot-com promise of mobile payments, when the banks and others figured they had it figured out, with P2P and P2B paments. MobileRadicals Blog » Mobile Payment – Six years after WAP One of the appealing things to me in the early days of WAP was how it was going to change the way we paid for goods and services. No more queuing for cinema tickets, I’d just fire up my WAP browser and buy them online, and they’d be ready for me to collect when I got there. Similar kinds of things … Continue reading Mobile payments – the promise that never happened, until Paypal

Nice summary of payment options in different jurisdictions from Skype.

Payments — going global and staying local – Skype Blogs

Here’s a summary of what we’ve been working on in the payments area over the past months. Did you know that Skype supports natively no less than 14 currencies?Customers wanting to top up their Skype Credit to pay for Skype’s offerings can now take advantage of online payment methods, special vouchers and scratch cards bought from high street stores. As well as giving people more payment options, Skype has made it easier for people on most continents – including Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania – to buy and keep track of their Skype Credit in 14 local currencies, including Euros, US Dollars, Polish Zloty, Brazilian Real, Canadian Dollar, British Pound, New Taiwanese Dollar, Swedish Krona, Danish Krona, Norwegian Krone, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar, Australian Dollar and Swiss Francs.

Continue reading “Skype payment summary”