Trends in mcommerce

MOBILE BUSINESS Quarter Four 20108
FEATURE // INTERNETFEATURE //

Quarter Four 2010 9MOBILE BUSINESS
I want it all, I want it now
The mobile phone is ubiquitous, personal and connected. That is why retailers,
bankers and marketers want to use it for informing, enabling and transacting
business. They are succeeding in global markets, but have been slower to make
inroads locally. Local m-commerce expert Belinda Simcox provides the insights you
need to keep up with the play…
>
m-COMMERCE
Trends in
m-commerce:
R
emember the days when your
pockets jingled with copper
coins and you had to borrow
a pen at the till to write out a
cheque? Those loyalty, eftpos and
credit cards you now use instead are about to be
replaced by something as ubiquitous – your per-
sonal and always connected mobile phone.
The World loves smartphones
Mobile and wireless communication tech-
nologies are being adopted with unprecedented
velocity. Two-thirds of the world’s population,
4 billion people, have a mobile phone with a
predicted 5 billion subscribers by the end of this
year. Within 2-4 years more people will access
the internet from their mobile devices than from
their desktop PCs. The worldwide smartphone
market grew 50 percent year over year in the
second quarter of 2010, and a recent study by
Juniper Research forecasts that nearly half of
all mobile phone users worldwide will pay by
mobile for digital and physical goods by 2014.
Couple that with the success of touch-based
tablet devices and we are likely to see the addi-
tion of manyfold new subscribers in markets
already considered saturated. Then add to that
base a new legion of IP addressable machines
as subscribers – your car, fridge, games console,
TV and so on.
We’re amidst a new computing cycle. From
the mainframe in the 1960s, mini computing in
the 70s and personal computing in the 80s, we
are now in rapid transition from the desktop
internet computing of the 90s to a new era of
mobile internet computing. This movement is
happening at an unprecedented rate – at 8 times
the speed the PC web was adopted. This rate of
change and innovation is due to the convergence
of a number of key trends including 3G high
speed mobile access, social networking, video
over IP, VoIP, cloud technology and impressive

mobile devices.
Typically when a new technology hits 20
percent penetration is when it goes on into the
mainstream of early majority. Globally that
inflection point for 3G adoption, varies by
region. Japan reached it many years ago with
now 99 percent 3G penetration. Meanwhile
North America and Western Europe surpassed
20 percent in 2007 and 2008, and for Asia
Pacific (excluding Japan), 3G is set to hit that
critical mass in 2011/2012.
Explosive growth
So what does this all mean for us in
Australia and New Zealand? Already over 28
percent of Vodafone NZ’s customers access
the mobile internet every month, 60percent
of which are via smartphones. NZ is certainly
experiencing this explosive growth, with smart-
phones the fastest growing segment of handsets
being sold. An estimated 13 percent of mobile
users in New Zealand have a smartphone. At the
end of Q1 2010, 48 percent of new mobile device
shipments in Australia were smartphones, and
it’s expected they will outpace traditional mobile
phones before the end of the year. Having adopt-
ed the other technology trends of the developed
markets, we are following closely in the footsteps
of our larger counterparts.
In fact, New Zealanders were early pio-
neers in the mobile arena. Ten years ago we
saw M-Com leverage NZ’s historical leadership
in eftpos e-payments with their breakthrough
mobile banking and payment technology and
now have over 180 banks on board across 5 con-
tinents (UK, Canada, Australia, USA, Thailand,
Cambodia and Egypt). M-Com just recently
took home two TUANZ Innovation Awards.
Fronde Anywhere have also been delivering
a range of mobile SMS payment services into
the local market since 2001 (e.g. Txt-a-Park and
Kiwibank) and are active on the international
stage with the success of their mobile commerce
and payments service in the Philippines.
GFG Group, another local mobile payments
company, have also been active in the mobile
payments market, particularly offshore with
their mobile payment solution adopted by large
telcos in the Philippines and the Middle East.
For the past decade, mobile marketing firms,
Run The Red and The Hyperfactory have been
leading lights on the international stage, the lat-
ter winning industry accolades and recognition
worldwide. So it comes as no surprise that the
company was recently acquired by one of the
leading media marketing companies in the US,
Meredith Corporation.
Although NZ led the way, it seems we have
not maintained that pioneering momentum,
particularly with our online retail endeavours.
We lag seriously behind our US and UK coun-
terparts, due in part as a nation of SMEs with
our small domestic market not providing the
purchasing power to resource sophisticated
online shopping enterprise. Also Trade Me’s suc-
cess and mindshare dominance over NZ’s online
shopper has slowed things down. New Zealand
has the highest per capita consumption of trans-
parent C2C trading exchanges in the world and
on a per capita basis outdoes eBay in the US.
The need to innovate
Local retailers and eCommerce technology
companies have been fortunate to operate in a
protected market. Our small, isolated geography
and high shipping costs have historically shel-
tered us from direct international competition.
However, offshore retailers and technology-relat-
ed companies are now looking abroad to grow
new markets. Compounded by the growing
tech savvy of our local consumers, Australasian
businesses need to innovate to become competi-
tive or lose share to international competition.
Already 90 percent of New Zealand’s internet
traffic is directed to offshore sites and a corre-
sponding 70 percent from Australia.
This sentiment is echoed by Stuart Christie,
head of Strategic Marketing at M-Com. “Service
and retail businesses need to actively develop
solutions to protect their long term value proposi-
tion. Large international players are not wasting
any time defining their mobile commerce plans.
Patents lodged by international players will con-
strain local scope to offer competitive proposi-
tions – the result is leakage from the NZ economy
to the likes of Amazon and iTunes for example.”
Mobile commerce has come a long way in a
relatively short period of time and gone are the
days of simply associating mobile commerce
with SMS. To understand mobile commerce as
a whole, it’s important to understand the range
of technologies involved, the reach and varying
audiences for different types of mobile com-
merce. This gives the background to then under-
stand the overall limitations and challenges. One
reason mobile commerce is so effective is that
it provides businesses with a way to reach their
target consumers throughout the day, and not
just when they’re at their PC or leafing through
a catalogue.
As it continues to grow overseas, mobile
commerce will inevitably start to play a role here
so this is the time to get up-to-speed with how
it works and where it is heading. Just like the
internet itself, we’re about to enter another era of
disruption to business.
Retail shopping is about to undergo a major
change with consumers using their mobiles to
not only pay for goods but to use them to scan
bar codes and bring up on their mobiles internet
information about the products to help them
make a choice. Everything from the supply chain
to the customer leaving the store with the prod-
uct can be traced providing firms with detailed
research they could not have dreamed possible.
Customers will be able to get special offers
before going into stores or be tempted to pop by
as they enter the area in which the store is locat-
ed. This brings exciting new opportunities for a
sector that has been hard hit by the recessionary
climate of the last few years.
So welcome to the new mobile commerce
revolution. Are you ready for it?
FEATURE //
Large international players are not
wasting any time defining their
mobile commerce plans.
Stuart Christie, Head of Strategic
Marketing at M-Com
Snap this tag to get a web-linked pdf version of this article.
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(thanks to www.contrastmedia.co.nz)

>
m-COMMERCE
Mobiles scanning bar codes
Mobile Tagging or Extended Packaging as it
is also called, uses camera-based readers to scan
bar codes - either the most common 1D linear
‘EAN/UPC’ bar codes or the more recent square
2D bar codes such as the QR (Quick Response)
Code well known in Japan and East-Asia and
designed for mobile applications.
Pointing the phone’s camera at a bar code
instantly takes a consumer to extended product
information, a website, video content, maps,
social media, contact information or even to dial
a phone number.
The consumer does not need to type a thing
to immediately engage with a product or brand.
Tags can be used almost anywhere, on product
labels, posters, print, the back of a bus, T-shirts,
storefronts or even on television.
A local NZ start-up Contrast Media is
helping merchants connect the real world to
the virtual with their HardLink mobile tag-
ging platform and were recent finalists in both
the TUANZ Innovation Awards and the New
Zealand Microsoft Partner Awards. Contrast
Media’s CEO, Chris South estimates that more
than two million mobile devices on New
Zealand’s primary mobile networks support the
minimum requirements for using a tag reader,
“reinforcing that this is an area that provides
huge opportunity for growth.”
Air New Zealand leads the way being the
second airline in the world to provide RFID-
enabled self-scanned check-ins with their
ePass, and their mPass mobile app with a built
in 2D Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) and
available for the Android, iPhone and Jave ME
feature phones. Air New Zealand took home
two TUANZ awards last year - the ‘big’ Overall
Award and the TUANZ Initiative of the Year
award for the ePass, mPass app, and self-service
kiosks.
As businesses start to think about engaging with
the new mobile audience, it is important to be cog-
nisant of the mobile consumer mindset.
The mobile phone is such a personal device, and
consumers have different priorities and expectations
while they are on the go.
Mobile consumers are typically looking for ways
to save time or kill time, using their phone to ‘snack
on the fly’, rather than ‘sitting down to a full meal’ as
they would at their PC. And not all users are equal.
There’s your mother and her old school phone; the
young Gen Y digital natives who would rather lose a
kidney than their mobile; the early adopting corporate
gadget geeks and the myriad in between.
Broadly speaking though there are three faces to
mobile:
• Mobile Intensives
• Mobile Casuals
• The Mobile Restrained
The majority of mobile intensives are Gen X or Y
and own a smartphone, earn higher incomes, and the
first or second thing they do when they wake up is
check their mobile phone. This group and their data
usage is growing rapidly (and demographics widen-
ing) while the numbers for Mobile Casuals are stable
and the numbers of Mobile Restrained are declining.
Subway NZ has launched a sophisticated
ordering app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that
showcases the value of integrating member profiles
and transactions across multiple channels. The
SUBWAY app integrates with Subway Express’ loyalty
SUBCARD to display a customer’s gift and loyalty bal-
ance, and with the stores to deliver the order.
It incorporates LBS to show stores relative to the
customer’s geo-location and customers can place
an order from the full menu, select from recent or
favourite orders and schedule when they want to col-
lect their order.
In the first month iPhone orders made up 20%
of all Subway Express orders without cannibalising
other digital channels, and the remainder split across
Web (70%), SMS (5%) and Mobile Java (5%).
Once new scanner hardware is installed in
Subway stores, customers will be able to use the
app as a full Subcard that displays a 2D barcode for
points redemption at point of purchase.
The application was developed in New Zealand
by mobile technology development company Altaine
who picked up two awards at the MOTODEV Widget
Developer Challenge for it. Altaine’s eCommerce
processing engine drives the Subway iPhone app,
TXT, mobile Java phones and their web systems, to
deliver orders direct to the Subway restaurant in
real-time, with built in fail- safe mechanisms in the
event of a printer or communications fault. Altaine
has developed iPhone and online systems for Subway
restaurants in the UK as well.
The three faces of mobile
Subway synchs up
Mobile tagging is an area that pro-
vides huge opportunity for growth.
Chris South, Contast Media CEO

FEATURE //
The hardware...
There are a myriad of ways m-commerce is incorporat-
ing the features and functions of the new smartphones
to progress or complete the sales cycle. The following are
some of the key enablers of the mobile device:
• WiFi can turn a whole municipal, corporate or cam-
pus area into a wireless access zone. This opens up mobile
internet adoption dramatically, with faster internet speeds
than current cellular networks provide, no carrier charges
and non-cell phone devices like the iPod Touch able to
make calls using VoIP services such as Skype.
• GPS receivers so the phone knows precisely where
you are, enabling location based services (LBS) that leverage
your real-time position to find stores, use local search and
to receive opt-in proximity marketing material. Since GPS
relies on satellite signals, it only works outdoors. GPS has
evolved to use A-GPS or Assisted GPS to remedy this in part
by combining GPS and cell tower information (CELL-ID). For
greatest indoor accuracy, Wi-Fi can be used to get hyper-local
positioning for navigating inside buildings and malls.
• Bluetooth is used for proximity marketing by
merchants to push messages to nearby handsets with
Bluetooth switched on. A recent example of Bluetooth mar-
keting done well was an integrated campaign Fly Buys ran
during New Zealand Music Month, using 20 Adshel mobile
Bluetooth hotspots combined with Run the Red’s QR Code
and SMS technology. Passersby were offered the opportunity
to download free Kiwi music to their phones. The results of
the campaign exceeded Fly Buys expectations with 30,000
people responding to the campaign and almost 6,000
download requests during that two week period.
• Camera and Video are used to do more than cap-
ture images. Consumers with data connections and mobile
tag reading software can scan product bar codes and
be beamed extended packaging information about those
products. Augmented Reality uses the phone’s camera to
view the physical real world environment with an informa-
tion layer superimposed on top. To experience AR, try out
NZs award winning iPhone app “WorldSurfer” designed by
Scott Judson while he was Creative Director at GeoVector
Corporation.
• Accelerometer, gyroscopic and magnetometer
sensors built into high-end phones detect how the phone is
being moved, its orientation and the direction it is facing.
These sensors are important for augmented reality applica-
tions to overlay digital information in front of the real world
viewed through the phones camera, enabling the software
to deduce which Points of Interest (POI) are in the camera
view.
• Near Field Communication technology (NFC), the
basis for radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and
readers, are predicted to be the next big thing and will
enable phones to transact with a contactless reader at
point of sale by simply waving the phone over the reader
to make the purchase. Only a small number of handsets
with NFC capabilities have been launched globally to date,
predominantly by Nokia. However persistent Apple rumours,
alongside a number of Apple’s patent applications and
their recent hire of NFC expert Benjamin Vigier, strongly
indicate an NFC-enabled iPhone is on the way. Typical of
Apples disruptive innovation, their patents describe using
the iPhone to charge the purchase of digital or physical
goods through Apple’s proprietary iTunes account, poten-
tially limiting the interchange paid to banks and extend-
ing iTunes’ influence at the point of sale. Another patent
describes the iPhone enabling person-to-person payments.
Peripheral gadgets are also popping up that, for
example, turn your phone into a credit card reader for swip-
ing and processing cards like the “Square” (created by Jack
Dorsey the founder of Twitter) which plugs into an iPhone,
or its competitor by Intuit and Mophie.
& the software
The popularity of mobile applications popularity
has been driven by proliferation of smartphones like the
iPhone and either come pre-installed on the device or
are downloadable by the consumer from app distribution
marketplaces such as Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android
Market, RIM’s App World, Windows’ Marketplace for Mobile
or Nokia’s Ovi Store as well as a number of 3rd party mar-
ketplaces.
Apps are limited only by the capability of the devices
they are running on, and with over 550,000 apps built for
mobile so far there is an app for practically anything! The
craze of smartphone apps is driving brands to build apps
with high build cost.
Device fragmentation and the need to recreate the same
app on numerous platforms plus maintain upgrades for
each, coupled with an ever swelling sea of competing apps
means the app market is potentially unsustainable long
term. However with relatively few local commerce- related
smartphone apps as yet launched in the local market, there
is an early to market opportunity. Some local apps:
• Mobile coupon apps enable consumers with GPS
phones to check for nearby businesses offering special
deals. If you are in the Wellington region and have an
iPhone try out NZ’s first location-based voucher book for the
iPhone “Dealjunkie” designed by Brady and Matt Thomas.
The US mobile coupon legend is Groupon, now worth over
$1b.
• Mobile loyalty apps that reward people for visiting
them or entice them in to capture discounts e.g. Subway
ordering app. Loyalty NZ plan to launch an iPhone app
later in 2010. NZ’s largest loyalty program provider Carlson
Marketing also have app development on their immediate
product roadmap. Foursquare, an international location-
based social app that rewards users for checking-in to a
venue with prestige badges, “mayorships”, and special
deals which progressive local merchants are utilising.
• mobile ordering apps such as Subway
• C2C trading apps such as Sella.co.nz’s app
• Banking apps, such as ANZ National Bank’s iBank
app and Westpac banking app for Australian customers
and on the roadmap for the other major banks
SMS (Short Message Service) was the
earliest mobile phone technology used for eCommerce com-
munication with consumers and is still the primary means
of communicating with the mobile user. Given its highly
personal nature and a high degree of regulation in terms
of user-privacy and best practice, it is a highly effective
means of communication with consumers. In a response
to an SMS call-to-action, messages are either “pulled” by
the user to their mobile, or once they have opted in receive
“push” messages from businesses eg. coupons, rewards,
event tickets. With the introduction and wide availability of
user-location data, LBS (Location Based Services) are also
increasingly being used offshore to enhance the relevancy
of SMS campaigns. A concept known as “geo-fencing”
involves setting a digital perimeter around a given location,
such as a retail store, and then SMS messages can be
dispatched to opted-in subscribers entering that perimeter,
for example a time-sensitive coupon.
Mobile browsers on smartphones and some
feature phones are capable of rendering a full web experi-
ence. However with resource constraints of mobile handsets
and a highly fragmented hardware market, it is important
for retailers to optimise their websites to also fit the mobile
lifestyle and technology. Consider the contextual browsing
intent and device demographic of your mobile customer.
Keep in mind the varied form factors of mobile phones, tiny
screens and big fingers, portrait vs. landscape orienta-
tions and input methods as well as expensive data plans
and slow carrier network speeds. Ensure your PC website
capability detects for mobile browsers automatically serv-
ing a suitably optimised mobile version with ‘graceful
degradation’ and adaptive CSS. Don’t use Flash, do use the
new HTML5 standard and don’t forget SEO. Amidst all the
hype and excitement around mobile apps, it’s important to
be cognisant of the higher penetration and usage of mobile
browsers as compared to mobile apps. With HTML5, the
open-platform WebKit for the main smartphone operating
systems and, taking advantage of a touch screen, geo-
location, or address book functionality, a mobile website or
web app experience can be as compelling as a native app
at a far more affordable development cost.

1m new subscribers every 20 days
The extended packaging arena is taking off.
A dramatic example in the US is the company
‘Big in Japan’ with their mobile app ShopSavvy,
for the iPhone, Android and Nokia smart-
phones. ShopSavvy is a transparent price com-
parison shopping assistant. Users scan the bar
code of any product, ShopSavvy decodes it and
searches for the best prices online and through
the inventories of nearby local stores using the
phone’s built-in GPS. It also provides product
reviews, a rating filter, wishlists, scan history and
price alerts for when a price drops within your
range and provides an integrated payment sys-
tem for you to purchase scanned items directly
from your phone.
At the time of press, ShopSavvy had 6.5 mil-
lion users with 1 million new subscribers every
20 days according to Alex Muse the founder of
Big in Japan. When asked about his plans for
NZ, Muse said 50% of ShopSavvy users were
from the US and 40% from Europe, and his cur-
rent focus was on Europe, with no plans for New
Zealand at this stage due to its size.
Chance for NZ
Is that an innovation opportunity for New
Zealand? Yes, however we face an issue locally,
according to Peter Stevens, CEO of GS1 New
Zealand, the world-wide eCommerce industry
standards authority for bar codes, RFID and
data synchronisation.
In NZ, there is not yet a strong ‘accredited’
source of local product and store information
which has meant retailer interest has been low.
GS1 NZ is the single official local source for
GS1 barcode numbers and standards to ensure
they are unique globally. If manufacturers source
unauthorised numbers, integrity of the GS1
standards system is at stake. This creates confu-
sion in the market, disrupts supply chains and
manufacturers may suffer losses if their products
are rejected by retail. So as we are amidst the
‘wild west’ of new and rapid mobile innovation
it is important to also future proof for its success
using industry standards.
Mobile search growth
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google recently
said: “One in three queries from smartphones
is now around where I am. Our mobile search
traffic grew 50 percent in the first half of 2010
and it’s growing much quicker than every-
thing else”. Location, Mobile and the Cloud
are where Google is dedicating its attention.
Watch this space as Google continues to evolve
and integrate their existing products such as
Google Places, Google Product Search, Google
Checkout and their newly acquired visual search
shopping technology with their mobile priority.
If you have an Android phone then try their new
Google Shopper and Google Goggles apps.
Google is gathering a vast database of loca-
tion based information from our GPS smart-
phones as we use their apps, mapping cell tower
information with the GPS latitude/ longitude
coordinates of POI (Points of Interest). No doubt
this is towards Google’s evolution strategy from
traditional one time explicit searches (a keyword
search from your PC or phone), to their future
view of persistent implicit search that incorpo-
rates collaborative filtering using your social
graph and location to power automatic searches
for you happening live all the time via your
phone.
The mobile wallet – NFC vs EFT
The convenience and omnipresence of NZ’s
eftpos ecosystem means there is currently only
incremental benefit for people to move from
paying for everything with their eftpos card, to
using their similarly portable phone.
It will be the cumulative effect of multiple
functions coming together on the one handset
that will have people ditching their cards for an
all-in-one device.
As mobile payments consultant Caroline
Dewe, past CEO of Fronde Anywhere, puts it -
m-COMMERCE
S-mobile: Social
GOES MOBILE
Social networking is really the web catching up
with life, and is inherently mobile given the intimate
nature of our personal mobile devices. Leveraged
by the mobile context of time and place relevance,
social commerce and local commerce on our phones
is the emerging new frontier.
If Skype were a carrier and its registered users
likened to carrier subscribers it would be the larg-
est carrier in the world. Each minute, more than
24 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube, and
270,000 words are written on Google’s Blogger plat-
form. Social media has long surpassed email. The
total number of people globally using social media
surpassed email back in July ‘09, and people have
been spending more time on social networks than
email for the past 3 years.
This social nature of the web these days is driv-
ing user and community interaction and retailers are
leveraging the network effect of these relationships
and connections with consumers.
The customer voice is not forced or “branded”
but unfolds naturally as a form of viral media. 90% of
consumers online trust recommendations from people
they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users.
Social commerce and user generated content
such as ratings and reviews, like buttons, voting
content up or down, videos, feedback, Q&A and word
of mouth is all driving social discovery through to
purchase.
Facebook’s launch of the Open Graph platform
is personalising the internet, and its Facebook
Places on the smartphone is locating you and your
social circle with businesses. The web is becoming
more like the village marketplace where trade and
commerce were done face to face, among individual
people. Technology is finally catching up to our tribal
nature as human beings.
Fingers are no longer doing the walking, with
the global decline of yellow page-type operations
as people reach for their smartphones or mouse to
‘Google it’. In New Zealand, the flailing Yellow Pages
Group in NZ and its imminent sale is consistent with
this location revolution. Consumers bring the internet
with them into the physical place because it’s where
people live their lives in the real world, using the
internet to help make decisions, as they buy shoes in
real stores, eat in real restaurants and socialise with
people in physical places.
One in three (Google) queries
from smartphones are now around
where I am
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
>

“Big leapfrogs around payment occur when the
existing or incumbent experience is miserable
and you’re putting in something much better.
If you have a scenario where you have an easy,
practical and handy way to pay that everybody is
familiar with, it’s really hard to shift behavioural
paradigms.”
NZ has one of the highest percentage uptake
of eftpos in the world. So while the world
explores near field communication (NFC) and
related technologies to enable and simplify
mobile payments, NZ has mobile eftpos termi-
nals to burn.
For this reason it is eftpos-related innova-
tions that have emerged. Auckland company
POCKETvoucher’s trackable SMS voucher offer-
ing stands out with their real-time validation via
the eftpos network at point of purchase.
Otago-based company EFTPlus technol-
ogy integrates seamlessly with eftpos to provide
merchants with sophisticated POS market
intelligence. The network setup in NZ with
only two main players in the market, Paymark
and EFTPOS NZ, has meant rolling out these
technologies in NZ have been easier than into
Australian and offshore markets where the eft-
pos landscape is more fragmented.
Examples of rapid adoption of new payment
methods can be seen in developing markets with
limited banking facilities.
For example, in Kenya the leading network
operator Safaricom introduced a nationwide
mobile banking service M-PESA enabling
Kenyans to transfer money via SMS. In a coun-
try with limited financial service infrastructure
but with a population familiar with mobile top-
ups, it has had a huge uptake. Moving money
from under the mattress into stored value
accounts with their telco was a familiar, safe and
compelling alternative.
Open systems the secret
Dewe points out that the payment services
that do succeed in developed markets tend to
be tied around niches. An example is Fronde
Anywhere’s Txt-to-Park technology, a NZ suc-
cess story and one of the best examples of
mobile parking in the world, processing more
revenue per capita in NZ than equivalent park-
ing services in the US.
The key factors to Txt-to-Park success
was providing an open system that was carrier
agnostic and accessible from any of the cellular
networks, keeping the user experience deliber-
ately simple, and designing an attractive alterna-
tive to the traditional method. The choice of not
having enough cash and getting a ticket vs. being
able to send an SMS to pay by phone is easy.
Another local example of an open system
that’s providing an attractive mobile alternative
to traditional cash is Wellington based company,
Snapper. They have created a payment category
using contactless smartcards to speed up the
transaction for small value items. Unlike the
Oyster card in London, Snapper’s open pay-
ment system services Wellington’s public buses,
as well as 850 taxis, plus any retailers who have
the Snapper reader plugged into their existing
terminal.
As Miki Szikiszai, CEO of Snapper explains:
“Payments need to be open to work. You can’t
have a single phone manufacturer own it, nor
should it be owned by a telco.” Snapper’s plat-
form is device agnostic with smartphone apps
on the roadmap for use on NFC enabled hand-
sets.
There have been 100s of highly successful
contactless payments trials globally, typically in
closed loop environments, such as large sporting
events and shopping malls that give retailers an
opportunity to participate, such as bars, restau-
rants and shops wanting to move people in and
out quickly.
Consumers like using their phone for prox-
imity payments, but beyond these trials, the big-
gest issue is who will pay for the infrastructure.
In a lot of markets the merchants do, however
they are not so interested in mobile payments.
What merchants want is a cheap, effective and
efficient means for their customers to pay.
Consumers will use it, so the question is about
the benefit to the merchant since they will be the
ones paying the fees and the new hardware at
the end of the day.
Dewe has found that there are a lot of finan-
cial institutions that are really well committed to
NFC, but one of the things some are grappling
with is telcos trying to lock down the real estate
on the device or the SIM card for NFC applica-
tions. She anticipates NFC will happen a lot
4 All contents © GS1, 2010
Mobile in Retail Executive Summary
Mobile Services: how consumers can interact with retailers
mobile service:
How consumers can interact with retailers
FEATURE //

slower than people think, with the biggest issue
being who pays for the roll out of the point of
sale, and the time that will take.
RWC 2011 the opportunity
The time may well be sooner for New
Zealand than other developed countries how-
ever. The Rugby World Cup could well provide
a tipping point on New Zealand’s mobile pay-
ments stage, given our size, the timing of the
RWC and with MasterCard as their major spon-
sor.
The Olympics in London provided an
opportunity to upgrade local infrastructure as
did the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The
RWC next year gives merchants a strong incen-
tive to upgrade their POS systems for contactless
payments. When the time comes these same
merchants would then be ready to transact
with consumers payment enabled smartphones.
MasterCard says their plans around their
PayPass Tap and Go product will be revealed at
their launch event in Auckland in October.
Once an NFC system is integrated into the
smartphone, a world of possibilities opens up.
You could use your smartphone's screen as a
secure numeric pad for inputting your PIN
or using the smartphone's sensors as a more
secure user-ID detection system. Location data
sent over the phone's data network could also
ensure greater security, to verify the handset is
being used where it says it is. It also creates an
opportunity for retailers to send data back to the
phone in the form of a receipt, loyalty reward
points or opt-in request for offers.
We're in a period of massive disruption with
eCommerce as a whole where a number of new online
retail approaches are emerging. These in turn are
being adapted and leveraged in the mobile context.
Some of these developments are:
Open Source, as seen with PHP, and more
recently with Google’s Android platform is bringing
costs down and providing a far more affordable entry
level for more companies. Magento an open-source
eCommerce application by Varien with 2+ million
downloads and an anticipated 300% sales growth
this year, has launched what it is touting as the
first mobile commerce platform. According to Kyle
Aspinall, MD of Exceed Online, a full service eCom-
merce Agency serving NZ and Australian retailers,
there is strong interest in Australasia for Magento’s
new mobile platform.
SaaS, providing scalable remote computing
power that takes care of everything, from hosting,
upgrades, patches, security, compliance etc.
Multi Channel and Personalisation, real integra-
tion back into offline systems, with a single view
of a customer. What happens instore is reflected
immediately online or on mobile from loyalty points,
purchasing history, building personalised profiles and
providing a customised edition of the store, based on
the user.
New buying models include:
• Transparent pricing, such as mobile apps
ShopSavvy and RedLaser. Customers scan product
barcodes at brick and mortar stores and check prices.
eBay has just acquired Red Laser.
• Bid buying, for last second savings, such as
PriceLine.com.
• Private invitation, membership only, driven
by time-based selective deep discount flash sales,
such as Gilt Groupe and Ru La La; or by social loyalty,
rewarding people for certain behaviour, including
sharing with your friends, watching videos, checking
out different sites or reading some ebooks. Examples
are Lockerz in the US or NZ’s HooHaa mobile SMS
marketing channel where you earn points including
Fly Buys loyalty points for receiving personalised
offers.
• Group buying, time based “One-Deal-a-Day”
sites, volume threshold before a coupon can be
redeemed, motivating people to encourage their
friends to buy. Pioneered by Woot.com in 2004 and
now there are huge numbers of copy cat businesses -
over 25 and counting in NZ alone. The mobile coupon
site Groupon is a runaway success, valued at $1
billion USD.
• Immediate gratification over the air (OTA)
instant digital product plus content delivery e.g.
Shazam mobile application listens to what music
is playing in the real world around you, identifies
the music and gives you the option to download the
music directly from the iTunes store.
Big leapfrogs around payment
occur when the existing or incum-
bent experience is miserable and
you’re putting in something much
better.
Caroline Dewe,
Mobile payments consultant
m-COMMERCE
Belinda Simcox has resided as a digital native in the internet jungle
of eCommerce and mobile marketing since the ‘90s. In the last 8
years she has been driving growth of mobile, social and search
for clients in NZ, Australia and the US. Belinda currently lives in
Auckland. www.belindasimcox.com
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