On the heels of the Bank Innovation Conference in San Francisco, the Bank Innovation team has shared a great presentation Brett King made for the Social Mobile Payments Conference, produced by Bruce Burke.
Learn more, and sign up for the next wave of banking at Movenbank.
Learn more about my own thoughts on bank 2.0, banking industry disruption, social media, mobile payments, and other engagement banking technology in my recent Backbase webinar 10 Key Trends from the Community Banking Trenches (webinar recording at lower left, complete slides from Slideshare at right).
Launched today, PayPal’s ‘Here’ touts itself as the ‘simple way to accept credit cards and PayPal anywhere you do business.’ Aimed directly at Square and Intuit’s GoPayment, businesses can now accept PayPal payments directly through a smartphone app and the Here device. With nearly 100M users, the addition of Here adds an formidable new competitor to the mobile payment space, and a very viable option for businesses at POS, wherever that may be. Here also provides the ability to invoice from the app like Square (send invoice to payer’s email or mobile), as well as track cash payments (and issues receipts for them). What about the UX? See the video below and let me know if you think it competes with Square.
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Here are the highlights of Here from Paypal’s site:
Accept more than just credit and debit cards. Take PayPal and checks, invoice from the app, and track cash payments — all with PayPal Here. (Q: Does Square or GoPayment provide businesses the ability to track cash and check transactions in the same way?)
Payment funds are immediately available in your PayPal account today. Withdraw funds on the spot with a PayPal merchant debit card and get the added benefit of 1% cash back on eligible purchases made with your card. *Checks may take up to 6 days.
All card swipes and PayPal transactions have the same 2.7% rate with no hidden fees or commitments. Taking checks and issuing invoices are free of charge. (Square is a flat 2.75% and GoPayment ranges from 1.7% to 3% of the transaction).
Free card reader and app. Works with Apple iOS and Android products. (No iPad or Android tablet app right out of the box? Will they work toward competing with CardCase?)
Got questions? Let’s talk. Get live phone and online support from a real person. (Will be interesting to see how the business support services stack up against one another)
Trust PayPal to protect you and your customers. Unlike other mobile payment solutions, PayPal Here comes with an encrypted card reader and is backed by PayPal’s world class risk management capabilities – secure, reliable and easy transaction processing and fraud protection for you and your customers. (there will surely additional responses to these claims from Square and Intuit).
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From Mashable:
PayPal Here charges users 2.7% compared to the 2.75% per transaction charged by Square. Each merchant that signs up for the service will also be given a PayPal Debit card which can be used to take cash out of your local ATM as soon as a sale is made (My take: this ‘instant’ feature is huge), or can be used as a Mastercard to make purchases — purchases using the card will earn a merchant 1% back instantly, essentially taking that transaction fee down to 1.7% (My take: again, huge incentive for businesses to use Here).
In addition to PayPal Here, PayPal also showed off an updated version of its mobile app today adding a Local section where you can browse for merchants in your area that currently use PayPal. Much like Square’s register app, you can then notify a merchant you’re on your way to make a purchase. Your name and profile photo will show up for the merchant at its point of sale, allowing you to complete the transaction by simply asking for your purchase to be billed to your PayPal account. (My take: PayPal needs to improve their UX, but overall this is a product that will do well as the UX matures).
How will this impact Square, Intuit GoPayment, and other payment applications? With over $7B in mobile payments projected for PayPal in 2012, and over $4B for Square, this will certainly increase adoption and make an additional splash into the POS and merchant transaction market. Stay tuned for further disruption.
There was an interesting article and discussion today on American Banker‘s BankThink. American Banker’s Jeremy Quittner wrote an article about Bitcoin being highlighted in a legal case on an episode of the Good Wife this week. Brief Clip
I added comments on American Banker, and wondered what you thought of Bitcoin? What are you most focused on in fintech? Alternative currencies like Bitcoin/Facebook Credits/iTunes or mobile money movement through more traditional channels with less-traditional technologies (think Dwolla, Square, Paypal, etc). Am I missing something on alt-currencies? Let me know via Twitter: @leimer
Here were my comments on the American Banker post:
Are alternative payments like Bitcoin a curiosity or just a progression toward the ongoing transactional shift away from traditional banking (or traditional currencies for that matter)? Though the volume of alt-payments/mobile payments is growing rapidly (astronomically some might say), the vast majority of consumers and merchants still do not see the use of the established volume leader, Paypal (amazing growth under the recently departed Scott Thompson), as a form of regular payment activity.
The innovations of currency alternatives like Bitcoin (and mobile payments) are a great destination, a great promise of better technology and control around money movement and control for consumers and businesses, but it is often an overhyped ‘promise’ of what is to come…Yes, volumes are on the rise. Yes, some amazing technology is being developed and implemented. Yes, the user experiences around contactless payment (NFC, alternative POS), and alt-currencies (Facebook credits, even iTunes) are currently being established (certainly Google and Apple will have some say about this).
But how much do banks need to pay attention to alternative currencies? Yes, we should be prepared to integrate and embrace technology change around money movement of any kind. But, if you’re in banking or fintech, you’re probably more closely watching alt/mobile payment volumes rise and crafting/enhancing your payment/money movement technology at your own financial institutions in response. I wouldn’t worry as much about the Bitcoin model/alt currencies just yet. They’ll most likely take the back seat to money movement through traditional players (and in the alt-currency space, I would be more concerned about Facebook Credits than Bitcoin).
Money movement alternatives like Paypal, ZashPay, Cashedge/Fiserv’s PopMoney, Dwolla, Square (+ others) do have a built in ‘hassle’ within the user experience because of the need to link to additional traditional banking accounts somewhere. The person/merchant receiving funds also have to be on the same network or sign up/trust these providers. It seems like the only way to eliminate this is with an established alt-currency (how is the Euro working out, let alone the anti-banking alternative digital Bitcoins?), or an established open-API method of money movement (better solution). To address the overall UX, we need to integrate both technologies into the devices we carry everyday (our phones), whether it be through form factor (NFC/alt-device) or network apps (Paypal POS, Proxense, etc.). The UX still would take a back seat for alt-currencies like Bitcoin until you bridge the additional gap in the trust factor (Paypal itself, even with great UX, still isn’t as trusted for money transfers as a traditional financial institution).
We will have some time to watch these standards develop. As we watch the volume of alt-payments rise, the overall volume will be a limited space in the overall consumer/b2b payment pie. The true revolution in banking that everyone sees coming like a lumbering freight train is still there. It’s less about alt-currencies and more about overall experience through technology. But Movenbank and Simple aren’t going to change the world of banking overnight, nor has (or will) Bitcoin or Paypal for that matter. But changes are here, they’re real, and there are more are on the way (Paypal, Square, and Dwolla are will see monster jumps this year to be sure).
The fact that the Good Wife even tackled the subject is interesting. The audience for the episode probably increased awareness of Bitcoin in Peoria more than anything Bitcoin’s banking industry coverage ever did.
