Optism™

Note: Optism is republishing our five most popular blog posts of last year, this was number #1  for 2012 and was originally published on September 21, 2012.

Our crackerjack staff reviewed a bunch of mobile marketing campaigns over the past few years and we picked 50 of what we thought were the best. We chose innovative campaigns that used mobile advertising, SMS, QR Codes, Mobile Apps and Mobile Commerce from companies including Starbucks, Macy’s, Target, O2, RedBox, McDonald’s and a couple of our own. We salute these companies for their ingenuity and hard work in creating these campaign that delight and inform us as mobile consumers. Stay tuned for next year’s picks.

Click here to download Optism’s 50 Best Mobile Marketing Campaigns.

Was 2012 the year of mobile? Well it was pretty busy for Optism as we continued our grow with new mobile marketing rollouts around the world. Here at the blog, we kept you up to date with the latest news and analysis in the world of mobile as we covered everything from mobile payments and mobile wallets to mobile marketing and mobile campaigns plus a sprinkling of retail, privacy, permission and SMS. Here is a recap of all our blog posts for 2012. Enjoy.

20 Months of Permission Marketing Blog Posts
By Optism Team, Jan 6, 2012
To kick off the new year, we look back at all the great blog posts about permission marketing over the past 20 months — including our regular Permission Marketing in the News articles about the mobile industry and all 12 of the chapter reviews of Seth Godin's Permission Marketing. Enjoy!

What Marketers Need To Know About Mobile Apps
By Optism Team, Jan 20, 2012
From brands and agencies to Millennials and veteran observers, I encourage each to give their take on the issues and opportunities around mobile — specifically permission-based mobile marketing. Today we take a step back and look at the Big Picture and examine the questions posed in an even bigger debate going on in the industry: what is the value chain? And, more importantly, what is the value of apps?

Thinking Human: Six Steps for Building a Successful Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy
By Mihai Vlad, Optism Team, Jan 27, 2012
Not that long ago, people bought everything from local shops. Shop owners had personal relationships with their customers. They learned through conversations with these customers what types of products and services suited them. With mass marketing, this all changed. We gained a lot in efficiency and economies of scale, but sometimes we lost that all-important human relationship. Today, we can get up close and personal again by using a mobile marketing strategy that employs permission-based techniques.

What’s hot in mobile marketing today? Read the IJMM to find out!
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Feb 3, 2012
A new issue of the International Journal of Mobile Marketing (IJMM) has been published, featuring the latest thinking on how the mobile channel can be used effectively for marketing. The award-winning IJMM collects insights and research from leading academics, students and industry professionals around the globe. The Mobile Marketing Association’s Academic Outreach Committee oversees the IMJJ’s publication in consultation with an Editorial Review Board made up of academic and industry professionals.

Optism Blog Series: A Book Review of Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing PDF
By Optism Team, Feb 14, 2012
We have taken our Blog Series on Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing chapter by chapter and created a handy little mobile permission marketing PDF. Now you can read (and share with others) about the importance of permission marketing and  how permission marketing techniques can positively affect any mobile marketing campaign. Enjoy.

Optism Goes to Mobile World Congress
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Feb 17, 2012
This year at MWC, we will be showcasing a complete Mobile Commerce offering that includes our permission-based Mobile Marketing solution, Optism, as well as the Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet Service and Digital Media Store. Our Mobile Commerce solution addresses the entire lifecycle of user purchases from preferences, promotion and discovery, to storefronts and settlement. Thomas Labarthe, Vice President of Mobile Commerce Solutions, will be at MWC ready to talk to you about how our Mobile Commerce offerings can help you foster new business opportunities.

Let’s Keep Mobile Marketing Simple, To Make It Big (!)
By Hani Ramzi, Feb 24, 2012
Show me a world-leading company, and I’ll show you a management that understands the value of simplicity and the danger of complexity. Indeed, too much complexity can drag companies down a slippery slope that eliminates gains, interferes with efficiency and ultimately destroys competitive advantage. However, understanding that less is more (keeping it simple) generates profits, growth and tremendous customer satisfaction.

Marketing, Commerce, Wallet and Broadband – the Perfect Storm at Mobile World Congress
By Optism Team, Mar 7, 2012
The Optism team is back from Barcelona, the home of Mobile World Congress, and we’re brimming with excitement! Mobile advertising, mobile wallets and mobile commerce were some of the key “buzz” words at the show this year and the GSMA made sure that its conference programme was chock full of information on these topics.

How Come Everyone Is Asking the Wrong Questions About Mobile Wallets?
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Mar 23, 2012
Since our inception, everyone at Optism has been focused on providing more value for our customers with a special emphasis on creating a great experience for people through our mobile solutions.

Insightful Book Reveals How To Work, Create & Sell With Digital Natives
By Optism Team, Mar 30, 2012
From marketing to media the digital native generation is impacting all aspects of how we do business. Michelle Manafy, a contributor to and co-editor (with Heidi Gautschi) of the book Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That is Transforming the Way Business is Done (May 2011) tells why we must all learn to participate in two-way conversations.

Giving Up Privacy for Convenience
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Apr 6, 2012
Recently, I discussed that the wrong questions were being asked about the development of the mobile wallet – namely, that that there was not enough industry focus on the needs of the consumer. This week, I focus on the privacy of the consumer and how much personal information a consumer is willing to give up for convenience

The future is bright for mobile commerce as Optism marks its second anniversary
By Optism Team, Apr 13, 2012
Two years ago, we started with a simple – but innovative – idea. We introduced a permission-based mobile marketing solution, called Optism, which put the user at the center of the experience. We asked people to tell us a little about themselves and their preferences so we could be sure that the ads they received on their mobile devices were relevant to their lives. And we gave them the ability to opt out of the service easily. We told them exactly what we were going to do and then we did it. Finally, we assured them that we would always respect their privacy.

MMA Forum Singapore – Looking towards a smarter tomorrow
By Optism Team, Apr 18, 2012
The first of the MMA Forums for this year will be taking place in Singapore next week, 23 – 25 April. This year’s Forum is bringing together the world’s leading mobile marketers and big brands to showcase smart approaches to mobile marketing. Through their examples and discussions, you’ll learn how to capitalize on the power of mobile in your own endeavors.

There Is No Such Thing As Mobile Or Electronic Commerce Anymore
By Anthony Belpaire, Apr 20, 2012
You may have read it: Best Buy’s Q4 results were below the expectations and the chain is closing 50 big box retail stores.  Margins are eroding as the retailer is being squeezed by both online retailers such as Amazon and discount stores like Walmart.

Carnival of the Mobilists #268
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Apr 24, 2012
Welcome to Optism’s first blog acting as curator for the Carnival of the Mobilists. In our dynamic industry, we’ve found that keeping abreast of what ecosystem members are saying is critical to staying on top. That’s why we published our Permission Marketing in the News blogs for almost two years! Now, we’re happy and honored to be a Carnival of the Mobilists host — and we’ve got a great collection of articles to suggest to you this week.

Mobile Enabling Rewards for Consumer Behavior
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Apr 27, 2012
Social Media’s influence across the ecommerce landscape has been profound. With so many choices and conflicting information about which products to choose, consumers are increasingly relying on their social networks both off-line and online to query their community about the right product and service choices. I’ve done it myself and asked my Facebook crew for recommendations on which gaming system to get for my kids. Why did I do it? Because it’s real-time feedback and it makes my life easier. In addition to listening, consumers are also broadcasting their recommended products out to their community. No matter whether they are listening or broadcasting, consumers have become more sophisticated and more careful about their shopping choices — using all available options.

MMA Forum Singapore Recap: The Shift from “Why Mobile to How Mobile?”
By Avtansh Sharma-Optism Team, May 4, 2012
MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) Asia Forum unfolded on April 23-25 in Singapore. Thanks to the efforts by the MMA, the increasing presence of media agencies and brands in this forum clearly indicates their necessity and importance to harness mobile as an effective channel to reach the consumers in the region. The presentations, discussions and conversations over these 3 days highlighted how the development of the mobile marketing and advertising industry is contingent on a deeper understanding of tech-equipped digitally-aware consumers, who increasingly shape the new emerging media.

Key Findings from the JWT 2011 Mobile Holiday Shopping Experience
By Optism Team, May 11, 2012
Mobile users want a better shopping experience was the key takeaway from a report by advertising agency JWT, who surveyed 465 US mobile users about their shopping experiences during the 2011 holiday season. The survey reported that a majority of the respondents are now using their phones to conduct shopping tasks like getting price and product information, conferring with friends about product choices, sharing product information with the social networks and making mobile purchases.

Can Mobile Help Retailers Compete?
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Jun 1, 2012
For years, brick and mortar stores in the US competed with each other on price, selection and service. The advent of online shopping has effectively taken away price and selection, so physical stores increasingly need to compete on service. Mobile has the potential to level the playing field for stores looking to deliver the best service to consumers.

Optism Goes to the MMA Forum in NYC
By Optism Team, Jun 8, 2012
Optism (Alcatel-Lucent) is excited to participate at the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Forum in New York City next week, from June 11 – June 13^th.

Optism Wrap-Up of the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in New York
By Optism Team, Jun 15, 2012
It has been a busy week for Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism as the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Forum made its annual stop in New York City this week.

What Will Be the Compelling Reason That People Start Using Mobile Payments?
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Jun 22, 2012
Using your mobile phone to make payments is still a novelty in the US with an estimated number of users of mobile payment solutions like Google Wallet, PayPal, LevelUp, Square, and others — totals less than a million. While we know that mobile wallets and mobile payments usage will ultimately become commonplace; some people are already using terms like revolution and wide-spread adoption. Until we reach several millions of users and trillions of dollars spent, we can hold off on announcing the mobile payment revolution.

Trust: A Competitive Advantage for Companies
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Jun 29, 2012
In 1991, the insurance company USAA sent out refunds of the insurance premiums that servicemen had paid while serving in the Gulf War reasoning that these soldiers can’t drive their cars while they are thousands of miles away. Over 2,500 of these soldiers returned the money, in effect saying “keep your money but just be there when we really need you.”

Why Mobile Carriers Will (Not) Partner with Google Wallet
By Anthony Belpaire, Jul 9, 2012
Mobile service providers have a strong impact on device distribution.  Remember you bought your latest smartphone at the Verizon or O2 store around the corner? Especially in markets where sales bundles – subscription plans combined with subsidized handsets – are a well-adopted commercial practice, service providers have a strong impact on which devices get distributed.

Tap In to the Power of Digital Moms
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Jul 13, 2012
Digital Moms in the US are an increasingly important demographic for marketers. Mothers are accumulating more wealth and making more shopping choices and using more technology than the average person. Digital moms are more likely to be owners of smartphones and more likely to consult others when making purchase decisions.

LevelUp Upends the Mobile Payments Paradigm
By Optism Team, Jul 20, 2012
LevelUp, the mobile payments division of SCVNGR, sent a cannonball shot last week across the bow of mobile payments and credit card companies by waiving credit card processing fees for retailers during mobile payment transactions. This could be a highly disruptive moment for the traditional payments industry by potentially reducing the $50 billion dollars that credit card companies currently charge retailers and providing retailers new opportunities via mobile payments to deliver added value to consumers. So far, other mobile payments players like Google Wallet, Square, PayPal, ISIS, Inuit, VeriFone and Dwolla have not followed LevelUp’s lead.

Mobile Marketers Should Not Violate Privacy, Location and Permission
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Jul 27, 2012
For almost 60 years, there was a symbiotic relationship between consumers and marketers over the amount of advertising flashed on TV screens, radio and newspapers. Consumers got free or subsidized content and marketers got huge market shares in order to push their wares. The slow decline of these traditional media outlets, caused by the advent of the Internet, DVRs, satellite radio and mobile phones, has marketers scrambling for new ways to target audiences on these new platforms.

Starbucks is the Grande Caffe Mocha of Permission Marketing
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Aug 3, 2012
Starbucks has been one of the most innovative companies when it comes to mobile and permission marketing with their use of SMS, mobile apps and mobile commerce. Last year, I featured their innovations in mobile payments. Now we have an opportunity to add another example of how the company is meeting the permission expectations of consumers with an excellent multi-channel campaign.

Optism Blog Recaps The First Half of 2012 in Mobile
By Optism Team, Aug 10, 2012
August is a good time to reflect so we thought it would be a good time to look back at all the mobile content we have created here on the Optism Blog.

Optism and Etisalat bring Permission Mobile Advertising to Nigeria
By Optism Team, Aug 17, 2012
We are very happy to announce our partnership with Etisalat Nigeria and the official launch of our Optism-enabled permission-based mobile advertising service. During a limited initial launch in the beginning of 2012, more than 800,000 subscribers opted in to participate in the mobile advertising service known as EasyAdz. Now agencies and brands can use the EasyAdz service powered by Optism to engage with all of Etisalat’s 13 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria.

Can we get rid of payment terminals?
By Anthony Belpaire, Aug 31, 2012
Some might call it the nerdy behavior of a passionate m-commerce professional, but each time I check out at the grocery store I am intrigued by these small, strangely designed payment terminal devices on the counter. They're a mix of metal, plastic and unhandy wires, key paths with flashy color combinations, and a display that seems to date from the eighties. In various countries, such as Turkey, you even see several of these devices on a single counter – resulting in even more unhandy wiring.

Apple Provides Consumer Value with Passbook, A Mobile Wallet
By Optism Team, Sep 7, 2012
In June, Apple unveiled the new features of its pending IOS 6 mobile software release, including a new app called, Passbook. This is a mobile app that organizes store cards, gift cards, coupons and even boarding passes and concert tickets. Apple describes Passbook as;

Carnival of the Mobilists #281
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Sep 12, 2012
Welcome to Optism’s second blog post acting as curator for the Carnival of the Mobilists. In our dynamic mobile industry, we’ve found that keeping abreast of what ecosystem members are saying is critical to staying on top of new and exciting trends. We are happy and honored to again be a Carnival of the Mobilists host.

Optism’s 50 Best Mobile Marketing Campaigns
By Optism Team, Sep 21, 2012
Our crackerjack staff reviewed a bunch of mobile marketing campaigns over the past few years and we picked 50 of what we thought were the best. We chose innovative campaigns that used mobile advertising, SMS, QR Codes, Mobile Apps and Mobile Commerce from companies including Starbucks, Macy’s, Target, O2, RedBox, McDonald’s and a couple of our own. We salute these companies for their ingenuity and hard work in creating these campaign that delight and inform us as mobile consumers. Stay tuned for next year’s picks.

360-Degree View of the Consumer Is Going To Require Retailers to Do a 180 by using Mobile
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Sep 28, 2012
In July, Oracle published a 40-page industry scorecard, answering the question, “When it comes to better data management, how are industries doing?”

Crikey, Africa is big. Results from a Mobile Campaign in Africa
By Alex Meisl, Sponge Ltd., Oct 5, 2012
Africa is home to one of the world’s richest men Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, the King of Cement who is worth $10B (US) and ranks #76 in Forbes billionaires list.

How to Best Acquire Customers via Mobile (With Their Permission)!
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Oct 12, 2012
In a fantastic post Mobile Marketing 2015: Rethink Customer Acquisition, Intent Targeting about how brands can either delight or disappoint their customers, Avinash Kaushik outlines his mobile experiences with a few of his favorite brands. Mr. Kaushik outlines 4 mobile success factors that determine whether a brand will continue to grab the “attention of the consumer” in this increasingly on the move world.

Facebook Violates Privacy and Permission
By Optism Team, Oct 19, 2012
In August, the United States Federal Trade Commission announced a completed settlement with Facebook regarding privacy violations of its now one billion users. In November of last year, the FTC had issued an eight-count complaint against Facebook saying that it had violated federal law prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices.

Mobile Payment Wars: Report from the Front Lines
By Optism Team, Oct 26, 2012
We are at the cusp of a worldwide explosion of innovation in mobile payments and commerce. What is unclear right now is how we will use our phones to purchase goods and services next year or five years from now.  Our continued hope is the conversation revolves around consumer convenience, utility and value. Unfortunately, in the U.S. and elsewhere, most of the conversation has been about having the wrong technology, transaction fees, finger-pointing and trying to anoint the mobile payment victor before the mobile payment game has even really started.

Are We Setting Our Goals Too Low on Mobile Payments?
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Nov 2, 2012
Over this past year, we have been highlighting the developments in the mobile payments and mobile wallet space. There has been a serious lack of consumer adoption of mobile payment methods in spite of a tremendous amount of initiatives and announcements from major players like Google, Apple, PayPal, Starbucks and Square. As we reiterated in last week's blog post Mobile Payment Wars: Report from the Front Lines, there needs to be more cooperation between the players and more focus on providing value for the mobile consumer. We believe that until a viable solution comes along which provides a payment solution plus additional convenience benefits, the consumer will continue to be satisfied with the traditional payment methods of credit cards, checks or cash.

Can You Ditch Your Regular Wallet For A Mobile Wallet?
By Lisa Ciangiulli, Optism Team, Nov 16, 2012
Have mobile wallet and mobile payment solutions become so widespread that it now possible to leave your wallet or purse at home and just use your mobile phone?

Wrapping Our Heads Around Mobile Payment Stats
By Optism Team, Nov 30, 2012
Over the past month, we have seen a number of interesting announcements and predictions regarding mobile payments. The numbers are both very large and seemingly contradicting.

Happy 20th Birthday to SMS
By Optism Team, Dec 7, 2012
On Tuesday, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first SMS message sent by Neil Papworth of Sema Group who texted “Merry Christmas” to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone over Vodafone's GSM Network. It was a truly momentous occasion as over the past two decades, texting has exploded, evolving into one of the most popular and effective means of marketing.

Big Data: Is it Good or Evil?
By Optism Team, Dec 14, 2012
We all live in a world ruled by data. People are creating large amounts of data and how companies are analyzing all the “big data” has become a hotly debated issue from a privacy and permission perspective. In an interesting viewpoint, Carl Kalapesi analyzes where the privacy lines are being drawn. He focuses not on one side of the debate or another, but instead tries to find the elusive middle ground.

At Optism, we would like to extend our thoughts and prayers to all of those that have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. Thank you to all of the tireless hours the emergency crews, police officers, fireman, national guard and other first responders are working to get us all back to normal.

Over this past year, we have been highlighting the developments in the mobile payments and mobile wallet space. There has been a serious lack of consumer adoption of mobile payment methods in spite of a tremendous amount of initiatives and announcements from major players like Google, Apple, PayPal, Starbucks and Square. As we reiterated in last week's blog post Mobile Payment Wars: Report from the Front Lines, there needs to be more cooperation between the players and more focus on providing value for the mobile consumer. We believe that until a viable solution comes along which provides a payment solution plus additional convenience benefits, the consumer will continue to be satisfied with the traditional payment methods of credit cards, checks or cash.

Echoing our sentiment, Marguerite Reardon wrote a post on CNET last week entitled, Mobile payments: A solution in search of a problem? She wrote, “There's been a lot of hype around mobile payments over the past year, but the No. 1 problem that the mobile payments market faces is adoption. Consumers simply don't see a reason to replace their cash or plastic with a phone. And yet one company after another is clamoring to get into the market.”

Ms. Reardon acknowledges that there are a number of compelling reasons why all of these players want a piece of the mobile payments pie. Technology companies see the growing emergence of both mobile and local to deliver targeted advertising and offers. Banks and Merchants want to stop paying credit card processing fees while the credit card companies want to protect their turf.  Meanwhile, startups flush with venture funds are poised to disrupt everything. As you listen to the announcements, they are all focused on the payment transaction rather than what could happen during the presale or post-sale, like reminding you to buy a bike pump when you buy a bike or telling you that you exceeded your cappuccino budget for the month. By switching the transaction from a ten cent piece of plastic with a magnetic strip to a powerful mobile computer containing all of users' information that is connected wirelessly to hundreds of other servers in real-time, the possibilities for the consumer should be both amazing and unbelievable.

For an example, visit the Google Wallet website. There are no pictures of people shown. Just an impersonal website focused on the following benefits; security, speed, savings and organization. Yes, we want it to be safe and fast. The savings only mention Google Offers, but what about saving on anything else?  The Organization topic sounds promising until you click on it, “Our online management center lets you view all your Google Wallet activity all in one place. Add or delete payment cards and shipping addresses. See both your online and in-store transaction history. It's all of your shopping, visualized.” That's it. No examples of how people use it. No videos from actual people or any testimonials. A missed opportunity to tell us how Google Wallet can make my life truly better or to at least inspire us with the possibilities.

Without an overarching problem or a wonderful possibility, Ms. Reardon is correct — mobile payments is a solution in search of a problem.”The market right now is not being driven by any specific or urgent consumer need,” said Aditya Khurjekar, co-founder and program direction of the mobile payment conference Money2020. “Instead it's driven by businesses looking to benefit from new consumer experiences, that are yet unproven. Ultimately, any new experience will succeed only if it is solved by working together for the common customer, and the experience is 10 times better than the current one. And that's a tall order.”

As we wrote about the potential of mobile payments and mobile wallets in March, “It should be more about helping you save time, providing convenience and hopefully, simplifying your life rather than just storing your money. It should have everything from your typical take out order at the local restaurant, to facilitating faster hotel room check-ins, to getting m-tickets for the football game that can be read at the point of entry to a stadium. It should help you reach your financial goals as well as your personal, and any other goals.”

Without a compelling solution, we believe that mobile payment adoption will continue to grow slowly. Others are forecasting a completely different future for mobile payments.  Two weeks ago, eMarketer published a forecast of mobile payment growth over the next four years. The forecasts are absolutely stunning. They believe that the annual mobile payments transactions value will increase from approximately $640 million this year to a whopping $62 billion by 2016. That is an average increase of about 230% or total growth of 9,600% over the next four years. The number of mobile payment users will increase by 6x to 48 million while average annual spending per user will increase by 20x to $1,294. To put these numbers in some context, currently about 1 out 40 Americans is spending about $7 a month using mobile payments.  Within 4 years, 1 out 6 people in the US will be spending about $100 a month using mobile payments.  $100 a month on mobile payments is not a lot of money. If your favorite lunch deli offers mobile payments, then you could spend $100 a month there easily. With compelling solutions in the marketplace, it might turn out that eMarketer is spot on with their forecast, they might even be underestimating the growth.

Maybe mobile payment adoption is slow because we are not setting our sights high enough of what mobile payments could be? Maybe mobile payments should be about wonderful possibilities rather than the realities of conducting transactions? We believe that until the mobile payment conversation turns towards the benefits for the consumer, adoption will not be there. If the conversation never turns, we will still have plenty of mobile payment solutions. Just slightly imperfect ones, and not quite as popular as they could be.

We are at the cusp of a worldwide explosion of innovation in mobile payments and commerce. What is unclear right now is how we will use our phones to purchase goods and services next year or five years from now.  Our continued hope is the conversation revolves around consumer convenience, utility and value. Unfortunately, in the U.S. and elsewhere, most of the conversation has been about having the wrong technology, transaction fees, finger-pointing and trying to anoint the mobile payment victor before the mobile payment game has even really started.

How did we get here and how do we go from here?

U.S. Mobile Payment Davids and Goliaths
The mobile payment stakes for America are obviously high. The mobile payment market will grow into a multi-billion dollar business and more importantly, having user attention with their mobile payment app prominently located on the first screen of a consumer's mobile phone. The mobile payment market is currently dominated by Square, Google Wallet, PayPal, LevelUp, ISIS and Starbucks with other emerging players like Apple with their Passbook mobile organizer, and Groupon. Some of these companies are huge while LevelUp is a handful of people in a startup division of mobile gaming company SCVNGR.

U.S. Mobile Buddying Up and Consolidation
ISIS, a joint venture of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile plus financial service companies Amex, Chase and Capital One, launched this week in Austin and Salt Lake City. Google Wallet has 140,000 locations but is not available on phones from the ISIS carriers. Sprint, the other large US mobile carrier is in talks with Softbank and has aligned itself with PayPal which has 3,000 outlets nationwide. Square which has 75,000 locations nationwide has hooked up with Starbucks and their 6,000 coffee outlets. LevelUp, which hasn't aligned itself with anyone yet, is growing in popularity with 6,000 locations due to the fact that it is not charging retailers any transaction fees plus it accepts both NFC and QR Codes for transactions. In response to LevelUp, Square began offering a flat, monthly fee for credit card transactions, versus the steeper 2.75% it had previously charged.

Mobile Payment Wars
The barrage of opinions from all the mobile payment players both in the US and abroad are being shot at a fairly rapid pace.

• Sean Harper, director of product management for payments at Groupon said “Right now, what merchants like the best is the credit card payment. So that's what we're sticking with.”
• A digital wallet leader may emerge later, but “in the short term, there will be a whole bunch of apps,” said PayPal Australia head of mobile business Paul Buchanan. “There isn't one right now that does it all.” Buchanan said he does not view requiring users to flick between multiple digital wallets as an inconvenience.
• “The goal of the digital wallet is to mirror a real wallet,” said Visa Australian country manager Vipin Kalra. “It can hold credit, debit and store loyalty cards and any other payment methods. Kalra disagreed with Buchanan: “At the end of the day, consumers won't want to carry too many wallets.” The winner will be the wallet that is “accepted by all major merchants,” he said. “Open and ubiquitous acceptance are the two key words that will eventually win the battle.”
• Seth Priebatsch of LevelUp realized there was an opportunity in helping merchants devise and run promotional campaigns that show exactly how many people engage with a particular ad, how many are then driven to visit the store and make a purchase, and how many of those return for another visit. “Suddenly the 3% you can save on interchange [transaction fees] is nothing compared to the revenue you can produce by effectively allocating $650 million of ad spend,” he says. “We want to optimize that part of the pie. That’s where we make money, and that's where we want you to make money.”
• According to Dekkers Davidson, head of mobile commerce business at Barclaycard, which offers online credit cards and credit guidance, successful mobile wallet adoption in the U.S. looks like one out four people using such a service in the next five to eight years. Now is the time for experimentation, not red tape or winner-take-all competition. “I liken it to Lewis and Clarke, where we're a 100 miles out of Missouri and looking back over the ridge and saying, 'Ok, where are we going?'” he said. “We're just getting started here.”
• Mike Love, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Mozido, a cloud payment network, said an attitude of “wallet wars” currently prevails.  “Whereas the market is already looking for a mobile wallet victor, the time is ripe now to simply educate consumers on the value of mobile payment systems, not bludgeon the competition.”
• Dodd Roberts, an executive at Merchant Customer Exchange, a confederation of retailers. “To quote [Henry] Ford, 'If I asked consumers what they wanted, they would say a faster horse,'” Roberts said.  “The average consumer doesn't know that their experience engaging in the commerce world could be so much better than it is right now. We are enhancing the experience, not necessarily solving a problem.” 

Mobile Exploration
For a snapshot of what mobile exploration and discovery should look like, listen to The Future of Mobile, a great panel discussion from the World Summit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted by Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe with Michael Phillips, founder of Vlingo (acquired this year by Nuance); Seth Priebatsch, founder of SCVNGR and LevelUp; Walt Doyle, former CEO of Where and now general manager of PayPal Boston; and Doron Reuveni, founder of uTest. The conversation was very collaborative and the panelists polled members of the audience about what they would like to see as part of the evolution of mobile. The topics covered included upcoming improvements in mobile software, mobile transaction via facial recognition, mobile recognition, personalization, augmenting personal interactions, how does the phone connect to my life and how does the phone react to me?

Conclusion
What is our mobile future? Is it a system that relies on legacy payment technology and point of purchase equipment that represents an incremental improvement in convenience? Or is it a system focused on providing consumer value that makes its money on big data that might or might not respect consumer privacy? Will the evolution of mobile payments delight us or depress us? Will the voices of reason win or will the battle be over dollars? Time will tell.

We can only hope we can continue to try to change the mobile payment and mobile wallet conversation.

In July, Oracle published a 40-page industry scorecard, answering the question, “When it comes to better data management, how are industries doing?”

Answer: Worse than bad.

Big Data is exploding, no surprise there. And businesses are not prepared to manage the data deluge in a way that is costing them real revenues.

For retailers, failure to properly process their customers’ data means that their already slim margins are even smaller. According to survey results, retailers estimate they are losing big bucks – to the tune of 10% of annual revenues – because they can’t leverage the information they collect across channels. The Oracle study found that only 17% of retailers rated themselves as having a 360-degree insight into their customers through data gathered across multiple channels.

Is this problem? We say it’s an opportunity. The Oracle report found that there is a silver lining within all the data to help retailers do a 180 degree turn to process the data and act on those insights.

Mobile.

How can mobile help? Here are 3 key areas which mobile can help retailers.

Mobility Element: For retailers, giving their sales teams access to mobile is key: 40% percent of retailers in the Oracle study said that providing store associates with mobile access to customer, product, inventory and other information is critical to combat “showrooming”. Mobile allows retailers to provide customized information to their customers using micro-location (in-aisle) technology. Mobile when combined with other CRM information (both offline and online) can provide the entire organization with a real-time, consistent and complete view of the customer.

Permission Element: A 360-degree solution is part technology and part human. You can have the greatest CRM system in the world and tie a mobile solution into it, but if you are missing the human element – it’s not going to work. We call this Thinking Human – which means asking the consumer what he wants and then actually listening and responding to the stated needs.

Engagement Element: For consumers, the ability to opt-in and share information with retailers allows them to share the products they like. Retailers can then target relevant offers to consumers. This concept was summed up very well over at the Mobile Demystified Blog in post entitled “How Mobile Solves The Retail Marketing Data Challenge.” Retailers, according to the author Kane, need to “look not for mobile marketing solutions, but mobile personalized engagement solutions.” A great example of personalized engagement is how Starbucks is using permission and mobile to connect all of its marketing channels.

Recently, I experienced two examples of how retailers were not using my data correctly.

1. I purchased a chair from JCPenney for my daughter’s bedroom and received a thank you email– with a $10 coupon. Cool. But the next email I received (and the several hundred I’ve received since then) told me all the things on sale in the store and online. Guess what? I’m not interested in the plethora of stuff they offered, from shoes to jewelry and baby gear. But I did recently buy bedding for my daughter at the store. Wouldn’t it be so cool if they referred to THAT and maybe even offered me new accessories that might go with the chair and bedding (throws, pillows, curtains)?
2. Earlier this month, I got email from my favorite restaurant wishing me “Happy Birthday”. Too bad my birthday is in August.

The Oracle study lays out the reasons why businesses and retailers should focus on using mobile to deliver “engaging and rewarding experiences to consumers”. All the elements are there for retailers to deliver a 360 degree experience; technology, mobile, permission and creativity. Retailers just need to get educated on the possibilities and really want to provide added value to their customers.