Sneak Peek into PYMNTS Summer School Case Studies

Want To Tell the LevelUp, Google Wallet and Foursquare CEOs What They Should Do When It Comes to Igniting Mobile Payments?

Well, join us at the 2013 PYMNTS Summer School – August 12 – 14 on the campus of Harvard University* and you’ll get that chance.  You’ll get the background and fact base you need to offer recommendations on how to move forward…and you’ll even get to share those thoughts in the presence of company execs.

Wow – talk about a learning experience!

These excerpts are just a teensy sliver of the cases you’ll be given if you enroll (The cases themselves are 20 pages long – lots and lots of really relevant detail on the company and their market and competitive environment at the time.)

So, check it out! And then enroll. But do it soon. You’ll need to come to class having read the cases!

My experience is that ‘live cases’ literally have students sitting on the edges of their chairs, knowing that the situations in which these companies operate are unfolding in real time. I also think it’s a far more enriching learning experience. Participants really get to appreciate the complexities and gravity of the decisions that CEOs are facing – and the consequences of making those decisions – in an environment that they understand and live in themselves.”

Jeff Bussgang, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School (and Partner at Flybridge Capital), and 2013 PYMNTS Summer School Case Facilitator

It’s been a tremendous learning experience just developing the case materials! Digging into the companies and building the chronology of their evolution in the mobile payments space offers tremendous insight into the context for why decisions were made, and a new appreciation for how especially hard it is to move forward given their “legacy” decisions and actions. It isn’t easy, and these cases put a real face on just how hard mobile payments is for everyone – big and small.”

Karen Webster, Market Platform Dynamics CEO and
2013 PYMNTS Summer School Faculty

A Peek Inside | the Foursquare “Live Case”
Is Crowley’s decision to pivot away from check-in to mobile advertising and promotions platform too little too late?

[Dennis] Crowley and team now acknowledge that it spent too much time and money fostering the gamification aspect of Foursquare, at the expense of activities that could have been more directly tied to revenue generation and the location based advantage that Foursquare used in 2009 to capture its position as market leader in the social/local/mobile sector has since dissipated. As a result, Foursquare has now bet its future on its ability to serve as a location, discover and recommendations platform. But, that space has become very crowded and includes players from a variety of sectors that weren’t positioned as competitors even a year ago. Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, LevelUp, Shopkick, PayPal and RetailMeNot are all examples of players using social/mobile/local platforms to bring merchants and consumers together around promotions and offers. The big question now for Foursquare is whether its shift in focus is too little too late, as new entrants with larger consumer bases and deeper merchant relationships, and therefore, more robust advertising and data platforms, compete with it for users.

A Peek Inside | the Google Wallet “Live Case”
Is the last seven years of struggle a sign that Google should abandon consumer payments entirely, as important as it once was to its overall platform proposition?

On paper at least, Google has a vast set of assets that could position it well to play in consumer payments. In spite of the popularity of the Apple iPhone, Android has a higher market share in the US and worldwide. It has an app store, Google Play, and, at least in theory, 10 million registered digital wallets (from anyone who buys an app on Google Play). It owns a handset manufacturer and could even ship phones preloaded with Google Wallet accounts. But its ten million Google Wallet accounts aren’t being used to make purchases at the physical point of sale using a mobile device, which was Google Wallet’s intention. Most of the activity is related to purchases in its app store, which requires having plugged a card into Google Wallet to make purchases.

Looking back, Larry Page must wonder where Google went wrong.  Long an advocate of companies developing products “outside their comfort zone,” Page recognizes that adhering to the philosophy has resulted in some hits (e.g. Google Maps, Gmail) and some misses (e.g. Buzz and Reader). As Page contemplates whether Google should even be in retail payments, he is probably reminded of something he said to kick off the 2013 Annual Developer Conference, one of his first public appearances since the news of his voice problems was made public,  “Technology should do the hard work so people can get on doing the things that make them happiest in life.”

A Peek Inside | the LevelUp “Live Case”
Can LevelUp achieve the scale it needs – in the time it needs to achieve it – to become a viable mobile payments alternative?

Seth Priebatsch, LevelUp’s Chief Ninja, sighed as he flipped his laptop shut and prepared to turn in for the night on this hot, summer evening in July. In 2008, Priebatsch observed the rise of mobile technology and believed that a “social gaming layer” could be built that would not only engage people, but also allow them to accomplish important things together. He left Princeton after his first semester to found a company called SCVNGR (the SMS short code for “scavenger”) to pursue that vision, something he described as building the “gaming layer of the universe.” Five years and a few strategic adjustments later, Priebatsch’s social gaming platform has evolved to become a well-established general-purpose physical point of sale mobile payments platform in the US. Although a nascent market, this point of sales volume rivaled that of many well-funded tech and mobile giants.

Priebatsch knew that the mobile commerce space was becoming increasingly competitive. Larger, more established players with bigger checkbooks, deeper channel relationships and larger teams were aggressively moving into the same merchant categories that LevelUp was pursuing. Priebatsch wondered if it were time for LevelUp to move more aggressively upstream to pursue larger merchant relationships, even if it meant competing head-on with these larger, well-funded competitors. But how to do so without compromising either the economics or the brand experience is the $1Billion question.

If you think you have what it takes to be a PYMNTS Summer School Fellow, then you better Apply Today so you have the opportunity to read our case materials in advance of the August 12-14 event and add to your summer reading list!

*Please note that PYMNTS is not affiliated with Harvard University, nor is PYMNTS Summer School a Harvard University program or activity.