Undoubtedly, 2011 is already off to a roaring start in terms of payments, the mobile channel and all of the innovation going on. I mean- they're having entire mobile summits on it-no, seriously. Also, NFC is blowing up all over the place, sometimes even with unexpected participants (like Angry Birds).
Recently I started thinking about all of the crazy mobile things that are happening abroad. DOCOMO and KT are involved in a NFC mPayment deal, with KT just recently going live with their smartphone mPayment service with the Galacy S II smartphones. (Their NFC payments system is dubbed "olleh touch" and can be used at Lotte Mart (a Korean grocery store).
But the U.S. is still hanging tough. (Well, except for the iPhone fiasco.)Particularly with Amazon- who has continued to be quietly innovative (making it very scary). Amazon recently announced it's investing heavily into LivingSocial local-coupon-type services. They recently released the Amazon CloudDrive service, allowing users to store music online and automatically putting all mp3 purchases in the drive without taking up extra space. They've openly announced that they're also challenging the Googles and the Apples by getting into the mobile payment service business.This is actually interesting in light of its first quarter earnings statement, which showed that its building binge of warehouses and data centers have sacrificed its shot term profits to lift business over the long term. It announced that it had no intention of slowing the spending as it looks forward to the future, but also said that its second-quarter profit, excluding certain costs, would fall as much as 65% or as little as 9%.
[As a tangent: hyper-local coupons are becoming all the rage! LivingSocial is introducing its "Instant Deals" offers, which will offer special deals that are specified by time (between 2-5PM) and will allow merchants to increase volume during typically slow hours. EBay has also jumped into the bandwagon with its acquisition of its hyper local mobile ad network.Catalina Marketing, long known for providing shoppers with coupons at store checkouts, is also looking to get into the online coupon space. I know Americans like deals, but seriously!]
Visa is also continuing to step up its game. It's been at the forefront of most of the NFC pilots, was one of the first to roll out the microSD interim option and is now announcing that it's going to be in cahoots with Square (the small-merchant, hardware provider that allows for credit card swipes) and indirectly, with Apple. This comes days after Square announced that it would partner with Apple to sell its hardware in the Apple store.
Undoubtedly, NFC will continue to be a big deal, especially in the mobile payments world. I'm most intrigued to see how not only how the different companies battle it out, but also how the regions collaborate to figure it out together- to create an international payment service.
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