Mobile banking gathering steam in BRIC countries

Despite concerns over privacy and data security, consumers in Bric countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — are increasingly using mobile phones for personal banking and retail transactions, according to a recent study by KPMG.

In India, 38 per cent of respondents said they have used mobile phones to shop from retailer’s site, while 43 per cent used it for banking transactions (a significant rise over the previous survey, 8 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively).

This is a global trend too. Globally, the percentage of respondents who have used their mobile devices for banking has more than doubled to 46 per cent from 19 per cent just 18 months ago. The percentage of people who have used a mobile phone to buy goods and services has risen from 10 per cent to 28 per cent.

Jehil Thakkar, executive director of KPMG in India, said, “Of those surveyed in India, 5 per cent of respondents conduct banking through a mobile device almost daily, while 10 per cent do so weekly. As many as 43 per cent of those surveyed said they have done banking through a mobile device at some point. This number is insignificant compared with our previous survey that used the data of 2008. These results clearly indicate that Indian consumers are embracing mobile banking rapidly.”

KPMG covered over 5,600 people across 22 countries for its Fourth Consumers & Convergence Report 2010, an annual survey that examines how consumers use technology.

The report found that respondents from Bric nations have demonstrated greater willingness to pay for both online and mobile content, including content such as news and information, compared with G7 or global users. The survey found they would also consider switching internet-service providers for exclusive content.

PayPal boosts online shopping protection in Asia-Pacific region

PayPal has launched newly enhanced buyer protection policy, in a move to strengthen the growing consumer confidence in e-commerce and online shopping sweeping across Asia-Pacific. The new policy targets to protect the over 785 million internet users who buy goods from over 8 million merchants worldwide, accepting PayPal as a payment method on their site.

Moreover, PayPal's Buyer Protection policy can also support online sales growth of SMEs PayPal merchants in the region. Thus, 84 million active PayPal users from over 190 markets worldwide will be more comfortable purchasing on small, unfamiliar sites.

Any eligible PayPal merchant can thus add the Buyer Protection logo to their website to give consumers more confidence in shopping on their site.

PayPal aims to help making online shopping safer and more secure as its Buyer Protection policy enables buyers who have purchased eligible items via PayPal to get a full refund if they do not receive the items from the seller. That’s fine as when shopping with a new or unfamiliar online retailer, especially on overseas websites, consumers are usually worried about the risks involved, like fraud, security and the goods not being delivered.

PayPal’s Buyer Protection policy is now applicable to all its registered users in Asia Pacific, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

Google Checkout introduces Android m-payments option

Google has launched a tool designed to enable one-man-band merchants moving from site-to-site to accept payments using its Checkout system and Android mobile phones.

In a blog, the search giant says it’s Android Payment Chrome Extension "helps merchants quickly set up a store and accept payments via Google Checkout and Android".

Before they can take payments, users need to set up a Checkout Merchant account and then create their own webstore template using the Store Gadget Wizard - a tool that taps Google Docs spreadsheets to help people quickly set up an online 'store

The store can then be embedded into a Google Sites page, which also needs to be built using pre-built templates.

Once set up, merchants can add the Android Payment Chrome Extension. They are then able to create a cart on a laptop containing the products a customer wants to buy. They then click the green Checkout with Android button and have the customer scan the QR code displayed with their phone. The QR code directs the customer to the buy page where they can complete their purchase.

Google admits the option has limited appeal, saying "this payment method may not be perfect for all cases".

PayPal readies itself for Mobile-Commerce

Already claiming to be the leader in mobile payments, PayPal has announced it had optimized its Express Checkout service for mobile devices. The new mobile service caps a busy week for PayPal that included the disclosure that alternative-payment provider Bling Nation Ltd. is developing a PayPal application. PayPal also added a feature to its new Adaptive Payments service that lets consumers pay merchants with a credit card while within an application, regardless whether the consumer has a PayPal account.

Like the existing Express Checkout, PayPal’s new Mobile Express Checkout is aimed at online merchants that already have a payment card merchant account but want to add PayPal as an acceptance option. Mobile Express Checkout has the same pricing as Express Checkout, 2.2% to 2.9% of the sale plus 30 cents for merchants with $100,000 or less in monthly sales; micropayments, sales of less than $10, are charged 5% plus 5 cents.

With the optimized Express Checkout service, mobile merchants get a better user experience on their smart phones or other mobile devices, according to Anuj Nayar, San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal’s director of global communications. The first iteration of Mobile Express Checkout is adapted for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android 2.0, an increasingly popular mobile-device operating system with merchants. Nayar says PayPal will adapt the new service to the other major mobile platforms, including Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile and that used by Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry.

PayPal identified test merchants as Buy.com Inc., which is already using the system, and Nike Inc., which will implement it soon. Mobile Express Checkout will be available to PayPal’s other merchants later this summer.

The optimized service puts PayPal in a position to capture even more mobile transactions than it already is as payments through smart phones and new devices such as Apple’s iPad explode. The eBay Inc. subsidiary says it has been offering mobile payments since 2005 and processed $25 million in such payments in 2008, $141 million in 2009, and expects to exceed $500 million this year. More than 5 million PayPal users will be using mobile devices for PayPal transactions, Nayar adds. “This is the next great step for us to open it up for users to shop on the mobile Web,” he says. “The time has come for mobile purchases.” Nayar would not break down the existing mobile volume into person-to-person payments and on- and off-eBay merchant sales.

A study released this week by the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org e-commerce division and done by Forrester Research Inc. says surveyed retailers are generating only 2% of their online revenues through mobile devices or applications. Earlier this year, Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester forecast that U.S. online retailing would generate $173 billion in revenues in 2010. Thus, mobile commerce may be in line to produce $3.46 billion in payment volume.

Many retailers have done little to promote m-commerce, but that seems likely to change soon. Only 2% of 59 Forrester’s responding retailers said they had “easy payment options” when asked about what kinds of information and alerts they offer customers on their mobile applications or mobile Web sites. When asked about what kinds of new information and alerts they planned for 2010, however, 24% mentioned “easy payment options.”

Meanwhile, the Bling Nation payment system, which recruits local banks and merchants to create closed-loop merchant networks with customers paying via mobile phones, disclosed that it is developing a PayPal application through the new PayPal X platform for third-party software developers. Bling is testing the application in Palo Alto, Calif., where it is headquartered. The application is notable because it’s a departure from Bling’s locally focused model so far, and it also represents a major extension of PayPal, the king of e-commerce, to the physical point of sale.

On that latter point, Nayar says Bling, not PayPal, is leading the way. PayPal has consistently denied it has intentions on traditional POS payment processing. “They came in through that [PayPal X] door,” Nayar says. “We’re very interested to see what they do with that, but it’s very early stages.”

Nayar notes that LiveOps Inc., a call-center outsourcing firm, got PayPal into the payroll business by using a PayPal app to pay several thousand temps working for a fundraiser sponsored by the American Idol television show. “PayPal X takes us into all sorts of areas that we weren’t in before,” he says.