ADN’co Payments Insight – September 2013

Google’s strategic reshaping…

• UNITED STATES – Google is reaching out for new opportunities through reshaping its Wallet app not to depend on NFC contactless only and eventually speed up its development pace. This strategic turn might significantly increase its base of potential users.

PayPal unveils its Bluetooth beacons

•  UNITED STATES – PayPal presents PayPal Beacon, a Bluetooth item that communicates with final customers’ mobile phones and allows subscribing merchants to streamline their checkout processes while meeting their expectations regarding customer identification.

This announcement comes along a reviewed mobile payment app, also redesigned to diversify its use cases by adding in such services as order-ahead and prepayments.

This new product fits in a new trend also pushed by other US giants including Apple, the iBeacons of which have just been introduced, too.

These launches, as well as Google’s new positioning, are highlighting new viable alternative technologies to NFC contactless systems.

French banks stepping in the e-commerce sector with PayLib

• FRANCE – Société Générale, BNP Paribas and La Banque Postale have launched PayLib, a multi-issuer, multi-media wallet to challenge PayPal.

This French banking initiative is intended to counter PayPal’s influence. PayLib relies on an aggressive pricing to attract both users and e-commerce websites.

Industry players still on their way to dematerialise payment vouchers

• FRANCE – Limonetik launches a paperless management solution for holiday vouchers letting travel industry specialists accept their paper versions online.
• FRANCE – the CNTR  and French union for the self-service vending industry (Chambre Syndicale de la Distribution Automatique) have agreed to enable the acceptance of luncheon vouchers at self-service vending devices. Beyond the issue of dematerialising these means of payment, their issuers are putting much work into diversifying their acceptance channels.