Digital payment: Apple Pay catching up with Google... and shaking up the market?

According to ITG*, 1% of all digital payments in USD last November were made through Apple Pay, compared to 4% for Google Wallet. The latter was launched on May 26th, 2011, the former last October 20th, and judging by the apparent success among early adopters**, Cupertino might have already seized an even more significant chunk of this fat holiday season pie. Over November, Apple barely scratched the surface, with a very early-adopter kind of retailer leading the pack: Whole Foods Market claimed 20% of Apple Pay transactions (28% in value)***.

But here, once again, Apple is leading in innovation rather than in invention, and this market pedagogy could also benefit Google itself, who didn't promote very much its own solution so far, but can leverage much wider platforms. The biggest loser could be PayPal, and ITG's Steve Weinstein thinks that they are likely to suffer against Apple Pay's much more user friendly solution. 

Needless to say, bigger players in finance are also paying attention. Many consumers still feel reluctant to make payments through other players than genuine financial institutions, particularly the ones that issue the reassuring plastic fetishes that, not so long ago, used to be referred to as 'smart cards'.

mot-bile 2014


* see "ITG Investment Research Report Finds Strong Apple Pay Momentum"
** key findings by ITG:

• 60% of new Apple Pay customers used Apple Pay on multiple days through November, suggesting strong customer engagement. In comparison, New PayPal customers used the service on multiple days during the same time period just 20% of the time.
• Apple Pay customers used the service roughly 1.4 times per week and used Apple Pay at the same merchant for future transactions roughly 66% of the time.
• Upon adoption of Apple Pay, the average consumer uses the service for approximately 5.3% of all future card transactions and 2.3% of all future card dollars spent.

*** Walgreens comes second (19%/12%), McDonalds third (11%/3%).

Atos Origin and the Three Musketeers

Atos Origin and France's 3 MNOs Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom created Buyster, a JV devoted to ecommerce with a focus on micropayments and a first batch of merchants already on board (Darty, Rue du Commerce, Aquarelle...).

Led by Eric Gontier, a mobile multimedia veteran with an Atos origin (via Axime, who merged with Sligos to found Atos Origin during the late XXth Century), the new platform targets within 5 years a 10% market share in ecommerce against the likes of PayPal.

The concept also ties the Buyster account to a bank card (transactions will require a Buyster code), but it adds a link to the phone number, a key ID in this mobile world of ours. Conveniently enough, Orange, SFR, and ByT manage the bulk of France's numbers, be they fixed or mobile.

So long life to the new venture... and good luck for the URL : buyster.com is owned by an Australian retailer (buyster.com.au). From checks to kangaroo bounces... And oh, Box Creative LLC recently preempted buysters.com.


mot-bile 2011

PayPal m-pilots and 90s revivals

Bango didn't wait one day and the beginning of the Mobile Content World forum to announce their implementation of PayPal. The M-content enabler had to surf on the other news of the day (eBay putting their hands on Skype).

A couple of months ago, operators would pull the plug on Simpay (analyze this : pulling the plug on a wireless project) and now, in a weird late nineties revival, mobilecos are talking next gen networks and fearing for their golden geese (screaming to the top of their lungs they might lose their dear voice ARPU) while ambitious dotcoms are splashing headlines with megabuck megamergers. The same dotcoms with about the same indecent market caps (eBay, Yahoo!, Google...), followed by the same usual suspect (Microsoft).

But this time, they're not only using paper which may end down the drain : they're laying actual greenbacks from actual profits. Even better : consumers are using their mobile payment solutions.

Skype scrapers - continued

Watch out for piercing arrows from Amazon, folks. eBay eventually purchased Skype for a cool $2.6bn and with a clear intention : integrating it as soon as possible, especially with PayPal, and becoming a comm² co (commerce + communications).
All Skype's shareholders (including Hutch) are supposed to have agreed on the deal. The solution is definitely in better hands with a swift multi-platform giant than with a single operator or access provider, whatever its reach.
Beyond P2P / C2C, I'm sure eBay will develop interesting B2B solutions. Call centers, pick up your phones.