A mobile payments service is launching in London with a very different proposition to other solutions coming onto the market.
The Droplet iOS app enables its users to load money onto their phone by direct debit or using their bank card so they can 'send' payments to merchants or friends for free – paying anyone who has signed up to the service.
The service has been trialled in Birmingham with 60 merchants signing up so they can accept instant mobile payments and take advantage of the company's 'no transaction fees' offer. Initially people could pay at participating retailers by scanning the unique merchant QR code in store, but the app now works with the phone's GPS to identify who to make a payment to. Users can browse a map for Droplet merchants and see who is offering special deals.
Droplet is launching in London on Wednesday and the company says it is in negotations with several 'national retailers with shops on every high street', with the first partnership to be revealed at the event. There is a one-off £1 charge to make the link between the app and the bank account being used to make direct debits - which is then given back to you.
Monetisation will come from the company's 'tools marketplace', which the company's CTO, Will Grant, sees as becoming the 'app store for payments'. Developers will have access to the company's APIs so they can create and sell customised tools, including things like ticketing and loyalty funtionality.
“We know payments really well but we don't know about things like tickets or car parking – the marketplace is going to be great for us and great for them," said Grant. Merchants can add a Droplet key to their till and receive email or push notifications when payments to their Droplet account have been made. The company is also working with ePOS companies to integrate the technology directly and offer different solutions within the marketplace. Merchants can also use a smartphone or tablet to monitor their account and reconcile the Droplet balance with their till.
“We felt having a card reader was almost a generation of technology backwards, you're still relying on people putting their card into the reader. Droplet is taking the friction out so hopefully people will need their card less. We're really good for smaller retailers because there will be no monthly charge for a card reader but we're also looking at bigger retailers too."
The app will be launched in other major cities across the UK, including Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/spotlight-droplet-cardless-mobile-payments
Google has removed all ad blocking apps for Android from its Play Store, including AdBlock Plus, which we reviewed and spoke to the creator of when it launched in November. AdBlock says that this 'unilateral move threatens consumer choice'.
AdBlock Plus is a free tool created by an open-source community that its creators say helps users avoid misleading, malicious and distracting advertising. The app currently blocks all ads but the creators planned to have a ‘whitelist’ of acceptable ads – similar to its desktop version - along with ad filters for users.
Ad blocking software violates section 4.4 of Google's Developer Distribution Agreement by disrupting the ad funding model which enables developers to offer free apps. “We remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies," a Google spokesperson said.
"We believe that the user, not Google, should be in charge of what kind of content can be displayed on their device," said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus. "Of course it's important that developers can still monetise but many overdo it or use ads that present a privacy invasion or promote malware. We encourage advertising that is done appropriately and conforms to an acceptable ads policy, which is debated and decided in an open public forum.
“By unilaterally removing these apps, Google is stepping all over the checks and balances that make the internet democratic. People should be really alarmed by this move.”
Android users can still install Adblock Plus from the AdBlock website.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/google-removes-ad-blocking-apps-play-store
John Lewis is held up as something of a model business in the retail sector, with its democratic structure and lean approach to bricks and mortar - it has just 35 stores serving the whole of the UK.
In his keynote at Retail Business Technology Expo, the company’s head of IT infrastructure, Julian Burnett, explained how the organisation approaches new technologies.
“There are endless new a novel ways to explore technology. The question is, how do companies differentiate themselves from competitors and create an interesting proposition for customers? There has been an explosion of new channels – many of them are relevant – so you have to decide how relevant they are to your business.”
The company trialled an augmented reality ‘magic mirror’ in its Oxford Street store – but Burnett admitted that it did not increase sales or "create something compelling and sustainable for the business", so the retailer did not continue with their experiment.
He said John Lewis will be trialling RFID chips in its clothing departments soon, which could take the form of tagging clothes to monitor stock levels, automatically re-order items and help staff find things that have been ditched by customers.
“You have to get used to failing fast in innovation – you can waste a lot of time, money and energy if you don’t. You know when you’ve found a winner if it has a sustainable role to play in your organisation.”
Gathering data and mobile payments
The company is starting to use technology in stores, possibly a mobile wi-fi solution, to gather anonymous data about shopper behaviour to help maximise the spaces they own and rent. Burnett said this was only "initially on a passive basis", so will potentially lead to opted-in location-based loyalty programmes.
On mobile payments, he admitted that John Lewis isn’t certain on which way it is going to go. “For an organisation like ours – it’s a big bet to place on the technology in this space. Will we all be using mobile phones as digital wallets? We’re not sure. Are we going to get to a position in five years’ time where some of us have gone down a blind alley? We’re still hesitant on the whole topic of payments.”
Burnett was excited about the potential for new technologies to improve the back-end of the business. Last year, John Lewis invited 30 British businesses to tackle three real business challenges in its retail stores. The winners were Black Marble, a software consultancy firm who offered a tablet solution to the problem of stores being flooded with last-minute back-to-school shoe shoppers. This is now being trialled in three stores, and the competition will become an annual event.
The company has an innovation board that meets monthly to consider a whole range of challenges and opportunities. They recently asked the partners (that’s everyone in the company) to suggest their own business improvement ideas - and received 127. The eventual winning idea will be trialled and if it meets the business tests, it will go into full scale implementation.
Balancing innovation and investment
On big data, despite noting the “big hype”, he said all retailers and other industry players are trying to work out how to bring together the large amounts of structured and unstructured to gain insight. “Back office data is outlegging the level of data in the front office,” he said. He also praised the cloud. “We don’t need to own anything. The pace of change that we’re faced is so dram that our ability to respond as an IT function makes it all but impossible to run traditional data services.” He said they are also actively looking at how John Lewis can take advantage of app stores for corporate purposes.
“We have to balance innovation with 50 years of investment in IT infrastructure. My job is to filter out the noise and focus on the things that will give us the best advantage against competitors on behalf of customers and partners."
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/john-lewis-it-head-talks-filtering-out-noise-mobile
Oxfam and Coldplay are asking mobile photographers to help create a crowdsourced music video using Scoopshot to call for an end to land grabs by governments, banks and other investors.
Scoopshot has a network of photographers in 170 countries who have been asked to show displacement in their lives by moving a personal object or task done in their home to somewhere unfamiliar. Coldplay's music video director, Mat Whitecross, will curate and stitch together the film and photography submitted via Scoopshot’s apps and Oxfam’s website to play alongside Coldplay's 'In My Place'.
The film will be launched in April as the World Bank convenes its annual Spring meetings. Campaigners say that the World Bank is in a unique position to change the situation as an investor in land and an adviser to companies on buying and selling land. This is the first time that Scoopshot’s crowdsourcing service has been used for this kind of campaign.
Oxfam's Campaigns Director, Ben Philips said: "Campaigning is all about putting yourself in someone else's place we know that when we unite and stand up against global injustice we can make a real difference"
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/oxfam-and-coldplay-ask-scoopshot-users-help-end-land-grabs
Siemens has launched an education and careers platform to help inspire more young people in the UK to become engineers.
The digital hub has been ‘explicitly designed to encourage young people to engage with engineering and manufacturing related subjects’, with many software, electronic and mechanical engineers now going on to work in the mobile industry.
The company is working with the Cabinet Office, Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to open the education portal for teachers, students and parents to access relevant information. It will be rolled out to 5,000 schools by 2014, aiming to reach more than 1.95m pupils in the first year and 4.5m by 2016.
Siemans launched its first mobile phone in 1985 and released more than 100 handsets before it sold this arm of its business in 2005.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/siemens-and-uk-government-launch-learning-hub-plug-digital-skills-gap
