The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Mobile Commerce
Domino’s UK launch Pizza by TXT
Aug 16th
Link: Domino’s Pizza by TXT Explained
You can now order pizza by text message from Domino’s here in the UK (via The Register) – although it’s not quite as flexible as you probably think it could be.
To use the service, you just hop on over to their website, pre-register, and create your regular order. Give it a name (for instance ‘Alex’s coronary’ or ‘feed the 5,000′), and save it. Then when you want to order, just text that name to Domino’s and they’ll do the rest.
Useful for all the people out there who just hate the teeth-pulling experience of phoning for a pizza 
2shop4 trial mobile shopping service
Aug 15th
Technology from Dialogue Communications is behind the UK’s first mobile shopping mall, 2shop4, which launched its trial service today and is set to revolutionise the way mobile users shop.
2shop4 will allow users to buy products instantly through the mobile internet and text codes. Shopping adverts for global brands, high street shops, supermarkets, travel agencies, sports and film tickets to name a few, will appear across multiple media outlets including bill boards, magazines, TV and online, advertising a 2shop4 Buy-Now code or keyword which shoppers can text to purchase goods.
The shopper texts the 2shop4 code or keyword; such as ‘Flowers’ to 84777 and receives a 2shop4 Buy-Now WAP advert direct to their mobile phone. The user then selects the advertised product and buys it via a secure payment system and the goods are delivered to their home.
SMS technology behind 2shop4, has been supplied by Dialogue Communications, an interactive mobile specialist, the UK Managing Director, Guillaume Peersman, is excited to be involved in this unique mobile shopping service:
“2shop4 is pushing mobile shopping into a whole new area. Before this service launched, buying on mobile was very limited and this service will bring a whole new dimension to mobile shopping. Dialogue is very excited about being involved in such a forward thinking project, as we pride ourselves on our innovative attitude in the mobile market and 2shop4 most certainly is that. Working with Evevoy, we believe 2shop4 will provide shoppers with a truly unique shopping experience.”
Following an initial trial phase, 2shop4 will be launched in the UK in October, expectations of global services available within 2008. Evevoy is in talks with leading Global Advertising Network for exclusive rights to 2shop4. 2shop4′s mobile Buy Now shopping service will enhance the marketing and advertising campaigns of its clients.
Andrew Curry, Chairman of Evevoy is looking towards the Brand’s future: “2share4 is currently being developed for Buy-Now Stocks and Shares, which will include a brand charity loyalty programme. Evevoy team’s will continue to be the architect and developer of innovational, commercial and technological products by working with trusted brands as global
strategic partners or VARs.”
2shop4 works on all UK mobile network operators and the system allows payments to be made with MasterCard, Maestro, Paypal, Visa, Delta and Switch. 2shop4 shopper lifestyle and gift profiling, keywords and codes can match clothing sizes, brands, products and services to the 2shop4 shopper needs.
Royal Bank of Scotland launch mobile banking
Aug 15th
Link: RBS offers mobile banking – vnunet.com
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has joined HSBC, first direct and Alliance & Leicester in offering mobile phone banking services.
The service, run in conjunction with mobile banking network MONILINK, allows 13 million RBS and NatWest customers with debit cards to view their account balance and statement information on their mobile handset.
Paul Geddes, RBS Group Consumer Banking chief said: ‘We are giving people another easy way to access account information and even greater flexibility in managing their money at any time’.
The news comes just a few weeks after MONILINK tied up a deal with Vodafone to offer banking services to HSBC, first direct and Alliance & Leicester customers.
Eden Project goes paperless with mobile tickets
Jul 25th
From today The Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, will become even greener as it launches a mobile ticketing service – which it claims is the first-ever paperless ticketing system that uses mobile phones from start to finish.
The organisation says that previously mobile ticketing involved a phone call or a visit to a website to make payment – however thanks to a three-way partnership between the project itself, Swiftpass and LUUP, the whole process can be carried out using just a mobile.
Jeff Berry, Managing Director at Swiftpass, welcomed the development as ‘an exciting step forward in ticketing technology”. He said: ‘This is the first large scale implementation of mobile ticketing that incorporates payment and fulfilment through the handset in a very simple way. We have known there has been a missing link for some time, but that gap has now been filled thanks to the partnership with LUUP.”
Jon Curry, Eden’s Head of ICT, said: ‘This development builds on the good work on ticket fulfilment we did last summer with Swiftpass. Now using the LUUP payment system for the first time we are able to offer our customers, including those who are on holiday and probably have no access to our ticket website, a fully automated, paperless advanced ticketing system using nothing but their mobile phone.”
‘As environmental issues continue to shift the public’s focus to living a less wasteful lifestyle, LUUP is proud to be part of this innovative partnership with The Eden Project and Swiftpass to make mobile ticketing easy, convenient and for the first-time truly mobile from start to finish,” said Christopher Lovold, UK Director for LUUP.
Big Green Gathering goes paperless with tixmob
Jul 16th
Following on from the news a few weeks back about the Two Thousand Trees festival introducing mobile ticketing, ethnical music event Big Green Gathering has teamed up with tixmob to do the same thing.
Festival goers can choose to receive all tickets on one phone or, for those buying multiple tickets, to have them delivered direct to their friends’ mobiles. Unlike traditional ticketing services tixmob charges no costly delivery fees. You simply pay the face value of the ticket plus a nominal processing charge and tickets will be available right up until the final minutes before the event starts.
Penny Kemp, Marketing Director at Big Green Gathering said, “Festival goers who come to Big Green Gathering will be delighted that we are going mobile. Mobile ticketing reduces the environmental impact of the festival and is just another small step on the road to becoming the most environmentally sound entertainment event in the UK.”
Big Green Gathering will take place from 1st-5th August, 2007 in the Mendip Hills, Somerset and has grown out of the original Green Gatherings and the Green Fields of Glastonbury Music Festival.
Masabi launch secure mobile card payments
Jul 12th
Masabi, the secure mobile applications company, today announced that BT has completed validation of the cryptographic
algorithms used in EncryptME, the world’s first mobile Java security application that provides web commerce level security on the vast majority of existing handsets. EncryptME is to be used by train ticketing technology specialists YourRail to enable tickets to be securely bought and used from almost all mobile phones using credit and debit cards.
In a single SMS message, or a few bytes of GPRS data, EncryptME can set up a secure session and sign up a new user, a new credit card and make a transaction thereby bringing fast, secure and convenient m-commerce to mobile users across virtually all handsets in current use.
“The main reason internet commerce has not been extended into the mobile world has been that most handsets cannot support the security available on PCs which is necessary to safely authenticate users and perform transactions. EncryptME symbolises the turning of the tide,” said Ben Whitaker, Co-Founder and head of Security Development at Masabi. “For the first time EncryptME brings internet security to mobile phones thereby enabling the likes of Amazon, eBay and any other internet retailer to extend their offerings to users on the move”
PayPal launch Mobile Checkout service
Jul 11th
Link: PayPal Mobile Checkout Opens for Business
Popular Internet payment provider PayPal has announced the launch of their new mobile payment service.
The company, owned by auction giant eBay, says Mobile Checkout will allow consumers in the USA, UK and Canada to purchase items securely by simply clicking on a PayPal button on the merchants mobile internet site.
Kevinj Dulsky, senior director of PayPal Mobile commented: “As the mobile commerce market grows as an extension of ecommerce, it will be critical for online merchants to adopt a secure mobile payment platform to reach new consumers and to remain competitive in the market.”
This is not the first move by PayPal to capture the fast growing mobile commerce sector. In April 2006 they began to offer a mobile payment service using SMS, which allows consumers to buy, donate or send money from their existing PayPal account via text.
News of the service comes in the week that Juniper Research predicted mobile payments will generate transactions worth $22bn by 2011.
Vodafone UK Customers Get Mobile Banking Services
Jul 9th
Link: Vodafone UK Customers Get Mobile Banking Services
Interesting news from Vodafone and MONILINK, the mobile banking network. Vodafone UK customers can now get access to their bank account to check balances, request a mini-statement or top up prepay mobile accounts, straight from their mobile handset.
Available now to HSBC, first direct, Alliance & Leicester customers, with Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Ulster Bank adding the service later this summer, the service uses a secure application on their handset to connect to the MONILINK platform, which then in turn interacts with their bank.
Al Russell, Head of Vodafone Internet On Your Mobile said: “With the launch of the Vodafone Internet On Your Mobile we want to give customers access to all the services they see as essential, in the palm of their hand. Banking is one of the most important services that our customers use and by partnering with the MONILINK network we can ensure that all of our customers are able to access their bank accounts on the move, whenever they wish.”
The MONILINK service has been developed by Monitise, a specialist in mobile banking technology, and VocaLink, the transaction specialists behind the UK’s ATM network, processing over eight billion transactions per year including 15 per cent of Europe’s automated payments. Monitise is currently working with partners across the world, including Metavante in the United States and T-Systems in Germany, to create a single mobile banking and payments ecosystem for the global population.
Alastair Lukies, CEO OF MONILINK added: “The mobile phone is the world’s personal communications device and it’s only natural that consumers want to use it as the ‘remote control’ to essential services. Vodafone’s commitment to providing mobile banking services is a great step in ensuring that financial provision in the UK is as convenient and accessible as possible.
The service is free until the end of 2007. Apart from the lack of a hole to get cash from, it seems very similar to the services you already find on most ATMs in the UK.
Mobile payments will reach $22bn by 2011
Jul 9th
P2P fund transfers and mobile payments will generate transactions worth $22bn by 2011, predicts Juniper Research. In addition, they reckon 204m mobile phone users will be paying for services with their handsets by then. Interestingly this figure includes payments made using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology – already in daily use with London’s Oyster Card and the Octopus service in Hong Kong.
Greater availability of NFC devices, for physical mobile payments, coupled with secure and easy-to-use applications, backed by the large credit card organisations and financial institutions, will create the foundation for a healthy alternative to cash and other mainstream payment applications.
Report author Alan Goode said: “The technology is available now to enable secure and fast payments to be initiated on the mobile phone. The business model stills needs some work but there are positive signals emanating from the industry that will create considerable revenue for all parts of the ecosystem. I am cautiously optimistic for the future success of mPayments.”
Mobile mashing with status messages
Jul 9th
Something struck me the other day – and it wasn’t a bus or a large object falling from the sky. There’s an increasing number of sites that ask you ‘what are you doing’, and update your presence on the web, via SMS, send an IM, or an email, or any number of options.
If, like me, you’ve got a few of these sites and services on the go, it’s rather a chore to keep going round and updating them all. I use Ecademy, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce - and they’ve all got various types of status options. There are already some mash-ups out there that link some of these – for example the Twitter Facebook plugin. However, I wanted the choice to be able to update my status on any of these sites and have it automatically propogate to the rest.
A little PHP hacking with XML, RSS, JSON and some other interesting bodges later, and I’ve rustled up a connector that brings all these sites together. It basically polls all the status sources, works out which one I last updated, and pushes that status to the other sites that are out of date.
When I’m in front of my PC, I’m likely to have Facebook or Ecademy running in the background, so it’s easier to change my status on there. However when I’m out and about, my application of choice is Jaiku. I find it easier to use than Twitter, and cheaper too – if I used Twitter via SMS it’d cost me 24p a go (thanks T-Mobile).
No matter where I enter my status, within five minutes it’ll update all the other sites and services. Interestingly the Jaiku app on my E61 also shows this information even if I didn’t use Jaiku to create the update – so it’s not just relying on what I last typed in to it.
The next step? With Jaiku’s ability to map my location by cell ID, I could add location information to my feeds too – or make a Google maps mashup, sort of along the lines of Buddyping. There’s obviously privacy concerns here – I don’t always want the world to know exactly where I am. With the status messages I don’t microblog my every moment, and have a choice of what I write, so that’s not a problem.
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