How payment experience will deliver a global ambition, Apple Pay, Facebook and the rest
Apple Pay’s seamless experience
Apple Released iOS 8.1 bringing Apple Pay to the masses. I tried using it today, avoiding Mc Donalds and heading to Walgreens for some shower gel instead. All ran as expected, I used the touch ID, tapped the checkout pad and that was that. Paid. It was an exceptional experience, nailed by their being little issue with the finger recognition. Seamless.
The diligence shown to making NFC payment experience seamless really shows, and this long-term view of bringing to market demonstrates that for the big boys, mobile payments are the Holy Grail.
Mobile payments going mainstream
Mobile payments are nothing new, mobile wallets and NFC enabled phones have all been here for a while, but the experience was fragmented, the technical hardware eco-system immature and the stars had not aligned in the handset software world to make it possible. Many blame Apple for not making this possible sooner. After all, they don’t turn up to Mobile World Congress to share innovation, they drive it from behind a curtain in Cupertino.
PayPal created a revolution with its now ubiquitous service, and while customers signed up in droves to make online payments easier, this was very much an online retail experience.
Now the tide has turned, with bold moves from Apple and Facebook, not re-inventing the wheel, but finessing it, improving the customer experience, leveraging their size to make it work. ApplePay is not so different from the swathe of NFC Android applications and softwares, but through its commercial clout and its awareness of the importance of experience it is driving mobile payments mainstream.
Facebook joins the party with Messenger
Facebook’s move to purchase WhatsApp at $19 billion was astounding, but made rational sense; they had grown at a monumental rate with 450 million users at purchase and performed better than the old Facebook chat. WhatsApp had caught the private group message Zeitgeist. When Facebook decided to unbundle their chat feature into Messenger and aggressively coerce users to start using it, this seemed odd. They had dug deep for WhatsApp and now Messenger appears with identical functions? Messenger’s unbundling has in fact been wildly successful, and is the #1 downloaded application in the App Store with 200 million daily users and growing.
All has now become clear for Messenger, with the recruitment of PayPal president David Marcus to lead the service, and with the ‘leak’ of transaction enablement in Messenger we are seeing it morph into a mass-market peer-to-peer payment system that can potentially revolutionise the banking sector. This product will be deliver exceptional user experience and in that a runaway success.
We already know where our friends are (on Messenger), we always end up owing them money (or at least I do?), now we simply send via messenger where we know they are already registered.
Global payments ambition
The opportunity may seem clear, Apple and Facebook want premium customers to transfer lots of money and use their payment technology to enable it. This of course is true, but in fact there is a much larger global opportunity. Those many millions who are currently with little or no affiliation with a bank.
In America alone there are 10 million without bank accounts that survive on pre-pay cards, pay day lenders and cash. According the Federal Reserve Bulletin, 63% of those in America without a bank account have a smartphone. Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft and all the handset players have made low value handsets accessible. Most of their latest operating systems work on second hand phones and pre-pay mobile is cheap and accessible globally. So truly, the opportunity it clear.
Globally only 1 in 3 have access to the internet according to Internet.org, the Zuckerberg spearheaded campaign to get the world online. At the time of the announcement Zuckerberg didn’t shout about his ambition to make them all bank through Facebook, but seeing the potential parallel with M-Pesa, this seems an obvious move. This together with the companies development of drone technology through the new Facebook Connectivity Lab, shines a light on a futuristic global vision, beaming down the internet to those without connection, enabling connection and money transfer.
With the meeting of large scale social connection through Messenger, global internet enablement through such initiatives as Internet.org and the infrastructure and mass-market backed mobile payment tech championed by Apple, the world we live in is going to have more value unlocked, not only by the connected but largely through the currently disconnected and unbanked. These developments are moving apace, the Future is with us, the Future is Now.
