Mobile Commerce

Commentary
mPayments Trust: Google or Facebook?
August 17, 2011

Familiarity breeds trust, it seems, especially when it comes to mobile payments. By now, everyone and his mother-in-law has seen last week’s survey results touting Visa, MasterCard and AmEx as the top three trusted brands when it comes to mobile payments, with PayPal posting a...

Commentary
Will Zong Make eBay the Future of Retail Commerce?
July 07, 2011

eBay’s announcement yesterday of its acquisition of Zong is just another interesting example of this e-commerce giant’s grand ambition to change the face of retail as merchants and consumers know it and experience it today. Here’s what I mean. Retail Nirvana as envisioned by eBay...

Commentary
Dangers of Assuming Invincibility – Could Your Firm Go the Way of the Typewriter Makers?
June 29, 2011

There was a lot of great stuff that came out of the Payments Innovation Institute at Harvard last week but two anecdotes that have absolutely nothing to do with payments specifically, I think, provide some of the more thought provoking insights around the pitfalls and...

Commentary
Why Facebook is Ripe for Commerce
June 22, 2011

I have always been up for a challenge. I read just last week a quote from someone from Forrester who basically said that anyone who believes Facebook is the commerce frontier is basically smoking something. (Well, what he said was that they had about as...

Commentary
“Googling” mPayments Ignition? Why Google’s Wallet May Be the Top Search Result
May 29, 2011

– Ask the Industry: Will Google Wallet ignite mobile payments? Share your thoughts here.   Google’s announcement today of its NFC-mobile payments scheme is, with a few exceptions, a real textbook case study in what you need to do if you want to ignite a...

Cool
From Fat to Thin: How the Cloud and Mobile will Transform our Wallets
April 21, 2011

A History of Your Stuffed Wallet   For centuries, people walked the planet with small pouches crammed with coins and other forms of money, never worrying about their ability to pay for an item at their local merchant (unless, of course, they had no money)....

Cool
Why Social Shopping is the Future of E-Tailing
April 21, 2011

Editor’s Note   At its core, social commerce is about connecting people where they buy and letting people buy where they connect. Dell, a brand in a segment not typically associated with “social shopping,” was really among the earliest adopters of technologies and tactics that...

Commentary
Will Apple Get Us to Wave At the Point of Sale?
January 26, 2011

Reader Warning: My usually sunny demeanor has been replaced by a little crankiness, given an unfortunate, unintended consequence of the snow and ice that has plagued Boston for what seems like months now. Last Tuesday, I slipped on the ice and broke my right wrist....

Commentary
Virtual Currency Equals Love
December 23, 2010

On the 11th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me … 100 Facebook credits and told me I could go crazy buying virtual stuff for my farm on Farmville. Frankly, it was not what I expected to receive from my true love. I’m...