Mobile Commerce

“Mobile commerce refers to the ability to conduct a commercial transaction over a mobile device” definition given by Ajit Jaokar & Tony Fish in their book Mobile Web 2.0

Intuitively the players in the Mobile Commerce industry are:

Mobile Operators, Banks, Credit Card Companies, Handset Manufacturers & Pure-Play players.

Today in the market the notion of M-Commerce is multiple:

• Mobile Banking corresponds to the action of having all the services of your bank on your mobile device (meaning account consultancy, funds transfer…) With players positionning themselves as provider of financial services to the mobile phones (mFoundry, lemonway)
• Mobile Payment corresponds to the action of paying wiht your mobile device in 2 ways either through Mobile Web Browsing (wifi not 3G for now) or through a mecanism of exchange of token or through a platform.
• Near Field Communications integrated system similar that the one your are using in your transportation can be added to your mobile phone. It is the same principle as the Digital Wallet concept.
• Premium SMS or Operator led is a system where the mobile operator is in control of the transaction and do it either through a Premium SMS or report it into the bill of its users.

In terms of implementation, we can see clearly that Mobile Banking & Operator led systems are definitely less difficult to implement than Mobile Payment or Near Field Communications.

Indeed in the case of Mobile Payment, merchants need to have a system to receive these payments in their premises such as today they have different credit card machines whether it is for a debit card (Nets, Moneo) or a credit card. Within this respect are we going to see a war between retailer/mobile vendor to see who is going to win the battle of standard.

The complexity in the mobile payments area lies in the interaction between the “wired world” and the “non wired world” which is completely different from the ecommerce. In the web, transaction are simple they are between websites and surfers. In mobile transactions are between users and retailers…So as the websites integrated new standards such as paypal, verisign…retailers will have to integrate such payment system… this where the challenge lies!

Couple of links:

Companies in the mobile payment: paypal, paypass, paymo sorry for the others but there are a lot more of them!

Mobile Payment Forum, Mobile Payments World.

Some recent News in Singapore – Singtel is trialling NFC….a long time after Starhub, which did a similar trial beginning of this year.

NETS, SingTel and UOB launch public NFC trial

Singapore’s leading electronic payments provider, NETS, together with SingTel and United Overseas Bank has launched a six-month trial which will enable Singaporeans to make payments using their mobile …

Note: This notion of Mobile Device is very interesting in the book from Jaokar and Fish. As a mobile device is not necessarily a mobile phone, as long as it is connected it can be any device.