Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week.
Vodafone partners up to launch a new mobile wallet platform
Yet another mobile wallet is gearing up to hit the market in 2013. Vodafone announced a partnership with m-commerce company CorFire and digital security company Gemalto to launch the platform in the first quarter of 2013 in Germany and Spain with plans to expand across Europe, according to a report at Bloomberg.
Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch reports that the initial rollout will focus on NFC-equipped Android devices and that the services “will be compatible with the standards chosen by Weve” (formerly known as Project Oscar). According to Lomas, Dr. Jae Chung, CorFire’s president and CEO, noted the platform’s potential in a released statement: “Vodafone’s customer base spans across more than 30 countries, which means our partnership may become one of the biggest, global implementations of NFC and mobile commerce.”
James Wester at Mobile Payments Today reports that Vodafone’s plan for its more than 400 million subscribers around the globe goes beyond the mobile wallet — plans include developing the platform so that third-party service providers can access the subscriber base.
Cashing in on why we buy
Mick Weinstein at PandoDaily took a look this week at a Tel Aviv startup called Commerce Sciences that is looking to cash in on behavioral economics, the science behind people’s shopping behaviors. The company wants to create interfaces for small- to mid-sized companies that provide insights from behavioral economics, predictive analytics and big data analytics to help them better connect with their customers, and in turn convert more sales.
The company already has launched its first product, Weinstein reports. The Personal Bar “is a free, self-service toolbar that sits on an ecommerce site’s footer and pops up coupons, a chat box, and other messages,” he writes. And he notes the first insights into consumer behavior already are emerging:
“… the bar already includes an Ariellian [ref: Dan Ariely] behavioral econ lesson: They’ve found that a little coupon graphic that a customer ‘tears off’ from the toolbar converts far better than a discount code that you need to Control-V at checkout.”
The bar isn’t the endgame, though — it’s a way to start relationships with merchants and collect data, Weinstein reports. He says company founders Aviv Revach and Eyal Brosh are more interested in creating “the brains behind optimizing the online buying experience.” He reports:
“‘This market lacks an entity that sees and analyzes all of the massive activity across thousands of ecommerce sites,’ Revach says. ‘We can integrate all that data and help merchants react to the changes and particularities of customer behavior. The bar is just the beginning — eventually we’ll integrate with the main elements of sites.'”
The timing for such a company to get off the ground may be approaching the tipping point — analysts predict ecommerce and m-commerce to boom in the next few years across the globe, and retailers will be looking for innovative ways to capture consumer attention.
NFC for the iPhone?
All the buzz leading up to the iPhone 5 release on whether or not Apple would bring NFC to the masses ended (for many) in a collective sigh when the phone launched without the anticipated technology. But iPhone fans who long for NFC capabilities might not have to wait for yet another version release of the phone — tech company Flomio has launched a Kickstarter campaign for FloJack, a pocket-sized NFC plug-in device for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
The campaign is set to run through November 26 and needs to meet or exceed a goal of $80,000. As of this writing, the campaign had raised $14,238. You can check it out here.
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