The brief videos explain the mobile payment features it includes (credit/debit cards, prepaid Isis card, loyalty cards, discount coupons), how to add payment cards, how to obtain discount offers, how to use the PIN and tap the device on a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, and why it's more secure than a regular wallet.
I've used Google Wallet for cellphone payments, and Isis seems similar. One similarity is that some POS systems allow users to pay for an item, including applying loyalty card number and a discount coupon, in a single step. Other systems, however, require the user to show the cashier the coupon's barcode on the phone's screen and then tap the phone to the terminal to pay.
I suspect this will be confusing for consumers. In fact, as I've been writing in Internet Evolution, mobile payments in the US will be confusing to many consumers for a long time as Isis, Google, and other mobile payment participants advertise competing systems, update POS terminals, and fix software and hardware bugs.
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previous posts from Alan Reiter's Wireless Web World
Beginning today, Google Offers is sponsoring free WiFi at eight US shopping malls and discounted WiFi at 16 US airports. The service is provided by Boingo Wireless, but there's a downside to the promotion.
Dunkin' Donuts has released a mobile payments application for Android and iOS devices that's similar to the Starbucks app, but with an extra feature of gifting. The Dunkin' Donuts software got me thinking about store apps versus platform mobile wallet apps.
The CTIA is changing its fall conference and exhibition to focus exclusively on enterprises. The event has evolved from giving equal weight to consumer and business issues to emphasizing business.
With the enterprise-only target, the show has changed its name from CTIA Enterprise and Applications to MobileCON. I think it would have been better to use a title like MobileCON Enterprise, rather than a generic name that doesn't highlight the business focus.
MobileCON will be held October 9-11 at the San Diego Convention Center, with pre-conference seminars and tutorials on October 8.
Google is laying off 4,000 Motorola Mobility employees, closing a third of its 94 global offices, and tightening the unit's focus on smartphones, the New York Times reports. In the medium-to-long term, this could be good for Motorola and Google, enterprises, and consumers.
Imagine being able to use your mobile phone to pay taxi and mass transit fare; use vending machines; make retail purchases; and check in at hotels. Every day, millions of citizens in Japan, S. Korea, and soon Singapore do so simply by waving their mobile phones in front of point-of-sale terminals using near-field communication or related technology. But, while the technology is readily available in the US, it will be some time before Americans can use their cellphones as mobile wallets.
A Verizon/Google tablet deal not only shows that tablets are now driving the hardware/software bus, they're also capable of building new alliances between old foes.
Telcos are falling over themselves to launch app stores – but are the app developers listening? Most telcos will need to do a lot more to engage their attention.
The sooner purveyors of cloud computing services can pass muster, security-wise, with financial services companies, the sooner cloud computing will really go mainstream.
In order for banks to grow, they'll first have to start by retaining their standing client bases. To do this will require better customer service and more transparency. Banks are meeting these needs through more automated commodity services and mobile banking applications.
Routesy is an iPhone application that uses the phone’s GPS to let the user know where and when the next train or bus is coming. The application’s developer, Steven Peterson, talks about why a mobile application makes sense, especially given that this transportation information is already available on the Web.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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