Emerging alternative mobile payments and mCommerce technology are helping to reshape the consumer purchase experience as the latest products and applications enter the mainstream. Despite early challenges in the mCommerce industry, analysts believe robust growth could be expected in the next few years as consumers become more familiar with leading edge mobile payment options. Primary mobile devices and online payment service companies offering, implementing or manufacturing such devices and applications in focus are NXT-ID, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXTD), PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) and MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA).
NXT-ID, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXTD), a biometric authentication company focused on the growing mobile commerce market, announces the Wocket® smart wallet has been accepted to retail on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) through its Launchpad program. Amazon Launchpad was announced in July 2015 as a new program for certain qualifying companies that fosters innovative new products from emerging brands. For these companies Amazon offers Brand Development on a special store, customer reach through Amazon’s most powerful marketing tools and global expansion when the brands are ready. Feedback from participant companies and their institutional investors has been overwhelmingly positive.
Gino Pereira, Chief Executive Officer of NXT-ID. Inc. said, “We are looking forward to offering Wocket on Amazon Launchpad. This platform features some of the more innovative products available anywhere in the world today and we are happy to be part of their offering. Amazon is one of the leading retailers in the US and helps us to gain access to millions of consumers who are concerned with identity theft and are looking for a convenient way to securely store all their payment information.” He went on to say, “Sales in the third quarter of this year have increased substantially over the second quarter, when we launched Wocket and we expect this trend to continue as we head into the holiday season. The marketing campaign we recently announced is creating Wocket brand recognition and our Touch of Modern offering is very successful with over 100,000 views in just 2 days.”
In other mobile payment developments and recent happenings: PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), the global leader in payments, announced recently that it will be making a significant expansion to its Seller Protection policy in six markets in Asia — Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The expanded protection will now cover eligible intangible goods including e-booking of travel tickets, tickets for an event, cab rides, services and more, which are based on unauthorized transactions. With its industry leading risk models and technology, PayPal is the only payments company offering such protection to both buyers and sellers in Southeast Asia in a frictionless and secure manner.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) introduced a new specification to use biometrics with chip card transactions. The specification can enable palm, voice, iris, or facial biometrics. This first-of-its-kind technology framework is designed to work with the EMV® (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) chip industry standard to help ensure open, globally interoperable solutions. Biometric verification is intended to prevent fraud as well as make it easier to pay securely. The architecture Visa has designed enables fingerprints to be securely accepted by a biometric reader, encrypted, and then validated. The specification supports “match-on-card” authentication where the biometric is validated by the EMV chip card and never exposed or stored in any central databases. Issuers can optionally validate the biometric data within their secure systems for transactions occurring in their own environments, such as their own ATMs.
Millions of MasterCard (NYSE: MA) cardholders will soon have even more ways to make safe and convenient mobile payments. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that they are beginning to roll out Android Pay in the U.S., enabling seamless and secure contactless payments at millions of locations across the country where MasterCard contactless payments are accepted. Owners of eligible Android devices can begin using Android Pay. For those consumers who receive automatic updates to their Android devices, the Google Wallet app will automatically update to Android Pay. Those who don’t receive automatic updates can download the Android Pay app from the Google Play Store in the next few days. Consumers can add their MasterCard credit, debit, select small business and prepaid cards from participating banks.
Source: FN Media Group LLC (FNMG)
