Even though they didn't test FaceCash, here's our general response to the "mobile payments are useless" argument:
http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Paying-With-Your-Phone-...
Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#12It's really disappointing that none of the developers of these systems thought to add anonymity as a feature.
It’s also sad that early adopters--who tend to be hackers/geeks--aren’t demanding anonymous transactions. It could even be limited anonymity, like being untraceable except by sender or recipient.
Yeah, we don’t need anonymity to buy coffee (not usually, but see note), but we certainly won’t get it later on for transactions where it is needed if it doesn’t get built in from the beginning.
(note) Who were you meeting when you got that coffee? Oh never mind, I can see in the centralized records who bought a coffee immediately before and immediately after you, and also who you reimbursed when you bought two coffees.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#13As a point of sale system developer (Ambur, an iOS app), the problem I'm seeing with all these solutions is that the good ones are end-to-end (i.e. the point of sale is manufactured by the payment service), and the bad ones rely on point of sale integration. The current division between point of sale and payment is that way for a reason, namely it allows for each to focus on its core competency and run with it. Squar…
I find your comment interesting and perhaps there's an implicit nod to Aloha/Radiant Systems somewhere in there? As someone directly involved in the market, I'm curious about your thoughts on where the opportunity (creating more card accepting merchants vs. winning market share of current participants) is right now wtf to the POS space. NCR just acquired Radiant Systems, so that seemed like an indicator of disruption in the space.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#14Mobile payments using contactless technologies such as NFC goes beyond the transaction at the Point-Of-Sale, in terms of providing a context to my payment. Even though it maybe that it would be easier to take your credit card and swipe faster than taking out your phone, launching the app and then initiating a mobile payment, the advantages are as follows: - The app can tell me if for a particular retail category, I h…
i dont think any of that matters. nobody cares.
the app can ask me to confirm the transaction after the retailer initiates. that's a game changer.
there is of course lots of lobbying to be done, but you need to already have a business interest to get the laws fixed.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#15It's really disappointing that none of the developers of these systems thought to add anonymity as a feature. It’s also sad that early adopters--who tend to be hackers/geeks--aren’t demanding anonymous transactions. It could even be limited anonymity, like being untraceable except by sender or recipient. Yeah, we don’t need anonymity to buy coffee (not usually, but see note), but we certainly won’t get it later on fo…
I share your concern, and I believe there are people thinking like that working on solutions. If I had the talent, it would have been built 3 years ago.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#16Mobile payments using contactless technologies such as NFC goes beyond the transaction at the Point-Of-Sale, in terms of providing a context to my payment. Even though it maybe that it would be easier to take your credit card and swipe faster than taking out your phone, launching the app and then initiating a mobile payment, the advantages are as follows: - The app can tell me if for a particular retail category, I h…
i dont think any of that matters. nobody cares. the app can ask me to confirm the transaction after the retailer initiates. that's a game changer. there is of course lots of lobbying to be done, but you need to already have a business interest to get the laws fixed.
i disagree. Lobbying and all can come later. Any bank who decides to take advantage of this new mobile channel both to engage their customers and are able to get a customer to change his payment modalities, they can recapture the mindshare they are losing today to the likes of Google and Square. Doubtful if these financial institutions are as prescient to realize the disruptive forces currently in play in the financial sector, but if they do then they can stay relevant.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#17As a point of sale system developer (Ambur, an iOS app), the problem I'm seeing with all these solutions is that the good ones are end-to-end (i.e. the point of sale is manufactured by the payment service), and the bad ones rely on point of sale integration. The current division between point of sale and payment is that way for a reason, namely it allows for each to focus on its core competency and run with it. Squar…
I find your comment interesting and perhaps there's an implicit nod to Aloha/Radiant Systems somewhere in there? As someone directly involved in the market, I'm curious about your thoughts on where the opportunity (creating more card accepting merchants vs. winning market share of current participants) is right now wtf to the POS space. NCR just acquired Radiant Systems, so that seemed like an indicator of disruption…
I firmly believe the POS space is ripe for some really intense disruption. Tablets (namely, iPads given that's what 90% of the market actually owns) cost $500 apiece, are easily accessible, and let business owners demo point of sale systems software right on their device, instead of just placing a call to Micros/Aloha and making a call based on specs and feature checklists, when those feature checklists include a lot of convoluted features they won't end up using.
The problem is, even with the revolution of availability in the space, given the poor purchasing experience with previous point of sale systems, most business owners are A) not very excited to have to purchase a point of sale and B) cannot possibly comprehend a point of sale that can run on commodity hardware. All sorts of silly questions regarding reliability crop up.
But, I digress. Regarding payments, I think that point of sale developers regard it as just a necessary evil that we have to roll our eyes and hold our nose that we need to integrate these payment solutions. We end up writing integration for each payment processor themselves, and each of their unique XML/SOAP/what have you APIs instead of spending time on what we care about. I would love for a user-centric company like Square to come in and just offer a usable API, but that's not really their gig and it's a complex situation.
Payments are in need of disruption, sure, but the first person to 'win' will be the one who decides they're not going to go completely vertical anymore, and has a nice, full, API with a good accounting/reporting web service to back it up. At that point, I can trust they're going to get my customers the best rates and widest acceptance possible, and I can easily write integration for them and push my customers their way. I could care less about this and that detail about slightly lower rates, or gift card programs, or cutting me .005 percent of each transaction. I just want to give my customers the tools to run their business correctly and accurately at the lowest possible development cost to myself.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#18Mobile payments using contactless technologies such as NFC goes beyond the transaction at the Point-Of-Sale, in terms of providing a context to my payment. Even though it maybe that it would be easier to take your credit card and swipe faster than taking out your phone, launching the app and then initiating a mobile payment, the advantages are as follows: - The app can tell me if for a particular retail category, I h…
All those things you list are a detriment to the merchant since they all hold up the payment process (longer checkout lines, disgruntled customers, etc.) as well as potentially giving the customer incentive to back out at the last minute.
If I were a merchant, trying to sell me on the above "features" would pretty much convince me not to take part.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#19Yup. And the only thing that twitter and social networks are good for is inconsequntial chatter and trading funny cat pictures. For that matter, the same applies to blogs too. And smart phones, and tablets. Hell, maybe even personal computers too. What can you do with them anyway, keep track of recipes? This whole internet thing is probably just a fad since I can set up a straw man caricature of it and knock it down easily without digging in to the fundamentals with any degree of depth whatsoever.
Let me be serious a moment. Most new technologies start out limited. Look at the automobile or the airplane or the personal computer. In the PC's case it wasn't anything more than a toy, a hobby device for years. But it's the fundamentals that matter. Whether or not extensive air travel is feasible is not dependent on the quirks of the Wright flyer but rather on the fundamentals, and on the characteristics of later generation vehicles like the DC-3 or 747. The same goes for mobile payments. In 50 years, maybe sooner, keys and wallets will be obsolete because mobile computing devices will be used for payment, identity, and access.
Re: Mobile payments: great for coffee, but not much else
#20In my country, I made a replacement for cab payments with mobile payments. We had the cab payment people, and all the telcos on board. However, because of the telcos selling virtual goods, they were used to 30%-50%-70% or more of the transaction. Where as the cab people were getting 10% on the credit card payments. The telcos gave up massive real world markets in order to keep their tiny ring tone, and wall paper markets.
idiots