They say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” In my report last year I contrasted Google Wallet and PayPal as representatives of two fundamentally distinct approaches seeking to win in the battle to bring mobile payments to the high street. Not anymore – having failed to ignite the market in the first 12 months [...]

The readers of this blog and Celent clients with access to our reports will know that when we talk about “mobile payments” we are careful to specify what we mean by it. While many talk about NFC payments, we prefer to discuss “mobile at the retail point-of-sale”, recognising the diversity of ways how a mobile [...]

With preparations for SIBOS (see Gareth’s earlier blog), it would have been easy to miss PayPal’s announcement this week amongst all the other pre-SIBOS press releases. And it would have been a mistake, because it is important. PayPal talked about “re-imagining money” and “new normal in retail”. Often such platitudes don’t mean much, but if [...]

EBay / PayPal has acquired Zong, one of the leading companies in mobile payments. What did they buy? First they bought relationships with hundreds of mobile network operators (MNOs) who trust Zong enough to allow them to bill the MNO’s customer accounts. PayPal knows how to bill a bank account or a credit card, but [...]

In March, U.S. Bank launched two consumer/small business products after extensive pilot testing: • Deposit Point, a desktop RDC product bundled with its online banking solution. • Deposit Point Mobile, Initially available to U.S. Bank Mobile Wallet users who have an iPhone. Following up on my previous post, Celent finds two aspects of the product [...]

I spent quite a bit of my time last week attending various industry events and conferences and discussing payments-related topics with industry participants. As it always is in Europe, the conversation inevitably turns to SEPA and PSD, and the overwhelming sentiments there these days seem to be frustration and confusion. Banks are frustrated by the [...]