CorFire Market Watch, 04-13-2012
Week ending April 13, 2012
Study: Prepaid card use up 18% as consumers use less debit
Prepaid card use rose by about 18 percent in 2011 as consumers dropped traditional banking products such as checking accounts with higher fees, according to a study released today.
About 13 percent of U.S. adults had prepaid cards in 2011 compared with 11 percent in 2010, according to the study by Pleasanton, California-based Javelin Strategy & Research, a market-research firm.
“People used to think of them as cards for people who didn’t have a lot of money, whereas today they’re becoming much more common for a variety of uses and a variety of demographics,” said Beth Robertson, director of payments research for Javelin.
KPMG: Global mobile payment market to grow at 97% per year
According to KPMG, mobile payment transactions will increase at 97 percent a year over the next three years. The research firm says this growth will be fuelled by consumer demand for devices with near field technology, such as tablets and smartphones.
It will also be driven by people's desire to shop whenever they feel like it.
"Growth in the m-payments marketplace will be driven by customers' increasing need for convenience and the development of a raft of new applications enabling commerce in the palm of our hands," says David Hodgkinson, senior manager in KPMG's customer and channel consulting team..…
Juniper: Mobile tickets to quadruple by 2016
A new report from Juniper Research has found that the number of tickets delivered to mobile phones worldwide will more than quadruple to 23 billion by 2016, compared with 4 billion tickets estimated to have been delivered during 2011.
Worldwide, mobile users are now beginning to adopt mobile tickets as an integrated part of their mobile lifestyle - whether for airline, road or rail transport, or for sporting or entertainment event access - and as an integrated component of their mobile wallet.….
NFC payments coming to Moscow subway
Vimpelcom, one of Russia’s largest mobile operators, has announced plans to bring NFC-enabled mobile payments to the Moscow subway.
According to East-West Digital News, the contactless payments system will be identical to the one Vimpelcom introduced in the St. Petersburg Metro last year, which enables passengers to purchase and redeem transit tickets with a tap of a mobile phone….
Nordstrom adds mobile POS devices to checkout
Recognizing that long checkout lines diminish sales (standing in line provides time for customers to overthink the necessity of the purchase they are about to make), Nordstrom has begun rolling out mobile point-of-sale (POS) devices throughout its stores (including some Nordstrom Rack Stores), allowing employees to check out customers from anywhere in the store, Forbes reports.
The modified iPod Touch devices include a merchandise scanner and credit card slider, and also allows staff to check inventory for size or color alternatives, when requested.
Nordstrom deployed more than 6,000 of these devices throughout their 117 full-line stores, a greater number than its regular registers.
Since implementing the program in the middle of last year, both the average number of items sold and the average selling price have increased. Johnson explained that the mobile POS is designed to provide a “faster and more convenient experience for customers and reduce the time it takes time for customers to check out,” adding, “anything that can help that is beneficial”….
Report: m-payment volume to surpass $900B by 2015
Expect mobile payments worldwide to account for more than $900 billion in transactions by 2015. That's the forecast in a new report from analysts at KPMG. According to the report, that means mobile payments globally will nearly double every year for the next three years.
The impetus for the expected expansion of mobile payments will be demand for NFC-enabled devices, the report said, as well as consumers desire for stores that are "always on, always, fast and always accessible."
"Growth in the m-payments marketplace will be driven by customers’ increasing need for convenience and the development of a raft of new applications enabling commerce in the palm of our hands," said David Hodgkinson, senior manager in KPMG’s customer and channel consulting team, in a statement on the report....