Mobile News Round Up

So there are some things I love about living with the technology I have today. One of the things I love is Mozilla Firefox, because it lets me save my tabs that I've been browsing so that I can open up directly to my pages when I return next (even after my computer reboots, which it does a lot because my laptop is constantly trying to go to the big IT room in the sky). The thing I don't like about this functionality is that it ends up with me having three windows of like, 30 tabs each that I've been meaning to read and I just never get to. Mergh. So here we go...

Okay, so let's do a quick round up to get our juices flowing around what's going on in today's society. Wal-Mart and Target have teamed up together to offer a mobile payment solution. Initial reports indicate that it will be similar to Google Wallet or ISIS, but sources insist that they aren't trying to compete. There has been confirmation that they are talking to banks , "technology companies" and "other possible stakeholders" to develop their offering. Most seem to accept that they will offer their own solution in conjunction with the other big players-- saying that "They will play the field and get in wherever they can". 

In a recent interview with Patrick Gauthier, the head of PayPal's product strategy, Gauthier confirmed his belief that payments is entering "battleground" mode. What this tells me, other than the fact that he probably plays a little too much Gears of War or Call of Duty, is that PayPal is really beginning to feel the true immensity/pressure of the mobile payments game. PayPal honestly does have an edge, being a leading "alternative payments provider"-- they have already grown accustomed to operating without the traditional plastic cards (even though they also have one), they've developed strong merchant relationships and also have direct ties with customers (which they heavily mine through their eBay relationship). What's in the future for PayPal? I imagine it will be an expansion of services, leveraging the data and experience that they have with eBay and maybe even StubHub. I mean, they're already processing $10,000 in mobile payments per minute, and with their acquisition of Zong fresh in everyone's minds, it seems like the sky's the limit.

In the ever-expanding world of ISIS, VeriFone, Ingenico, ViVOtech and Equinox all announced that they would "integrate and support" the ISIS model. This most likely means that they'll be producing devices, security, etc. (Especially Ingenico with its cuh-razy reach in POS terminals.) Does anyone else get the feeling that more people are joining because everyone else is? It's like watching lemmings.

Western Union is also getting in on the game by launching an electronic wallet for B2B payments. They expect to launch in the U.S. and Canada in Q1 2012. This ewallet will offer a "closed loop ecosystem enabling the reliable transfer of funds between senders and receivers".  Seems like WU is trying to get a piece of this action, but smartly going in the direction of B2B which is not nearly as saturated as C2B.

In other news, Visa and MasterCard finally settled on the allegations of them prohibiting merchants from "steering" (or persuading customers through incentives to use lower-cost payment instruments (cash, so that the merchant doesn't need to pay the interchange fee). This has been going on for awhile, but I have to agree its an unfair practice. I'm glad something is finally being done about it.

Unsurprisingly, amidst all of the news about mobile payments and mobile technology, it is easy to see why appWatchdog recently found that "Data (in)security is rapidly gaining consumer attention in major media. In 2011 major breaches at Sony, Epsilon and others have highlighted the risk consumers face from their data being compromised". Follow up research from viaForensics indicated that only 17% if their surveyed (100) apps received a pass rating when it came to data storage and data risk. 83% received a fail or a warn. This means that mobile applications presently store sensitive data in an unencrypted manner for a high percentage of the time. However, they were quick to acknowledge that financial apps typically exposed less data than social networking apps. (75% of social networking apps received a fail, whereas only 25% of financial apps received a fail.)

So much news flying about... so little time!