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MasterCard has introduced an iPhone application in an effort to revolutionize the mobile commerce experience for cardholders.

The MarketPlace application gives MasterCard users mobile access to weekday deals. The company partnered with Next Jump, an ecommerce company.

“We want to be where consumers are, in a format that they love,” said Melody Miller, group head of commerce solutions at MasterCard World, Purchase, NY. “We see this as a strategic way to extend our platform.

“We’re looking at several areas,” she said. “We’re seeing mobile as a channel to deliver value-end services.

“We have several other iPhone apps, making life easy for the consumer, as well as offers to the consumer.

MasterCard develops and markets payment services and provides analysis and consulting services to financial-institution customers and merchants.

Personalized shopping
The application is a personalized shopping platform with customized deals and offers from select merchants.

Cardholders can access the application and can get discounts of 50 percent off or more on products and services.

The offers are available in limited quantity and reservations are required – first-come, first-serve basis.

“We’re getting the word out about this by looking at the demographic of the users and leveraging the mass trends of social media,” Ms. Miller said. “We’re using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Here is a screen grab of the application:

Mobile deals
Past deals include discounts for Apple iPods, Nintendo Wiis, Sephora products, Barnes & Noble’s nook eBook Reader and Macy’s and Converse products.

Consumers can save anywhere from $25-$100.

To reserve their spot for the daily deals, MasterCard cardholders must sign in. Those that do not have an account can sign up for free.

Users can also read full offer details of the deals.

Here is another screen grab of the application:

In addition, MasterCard has an ATM Hunter application for BlackBerry, giving users the ability to find the nearest ATM anywhere in the world.

The application is also available for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch (see story).

“We’re looking to be where consumers are heading,” Ms. Miller said. “One of the key ways of the growing trend to ecommerce shopping is to extend into the mobile space.”

Final take
Rimma Kats, editorial assistant at Mobile Commerce Daily, New York.

Rimma Kats is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily and Mobile Marketer. Reach her at rimma@mobilemarketer.com.

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Tags: iPhone application, MasterCard, Melody Miller, mobile, mobile commerce, mobile marketing

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Posted by Oren Frank on 06.30.10 @ 11:32 AM

Remember the old audio CD? That round piece of plastic holding 15 songs — two of which you actually wanted to hear? While many of us still use and occasionally buy CDs, I suspect we can agree that with iTunes as the world’s-biggest music marketer, the CD’s glory days are over. The audio CD represented an unconnected world, in which physical manifestation and distribution were needed to get the music bits and bytes to consumers. As we now know, digital networks disrupt business models by turning atoms into bits, and we also learned that the marginal cost of digital distribution is zero. All this led to massive disintermediation that made the physical CD product — and the entire distribution system built around it — completely obsolete.

Now let’s think for a moment about the credit card. It’s a plastic product (rectangular this time), physically representing data that could not be connected online at the time it was invented, and it’s a pretty expensive business to run. Beginning to sound familiar? You bet. And to make matters worse, the credit card, like all kinds of fiat money (without intrinsic value matching its declared value), is already an abstraction, or “virtual,” and therefore even more susceptible to disruption.

It is therefore no big surprise that credit card disintermediation is happening all around us; check out Google checkout, Paypal, Obopay, Facebook credits, the dozens of patents Amazon registered in this category, Square, Zong, Boku/Paymo (their tagline is “no plastic required”), Venom, Mopay, and countless other mobile-based transaction solutions. Financial services are shifting to social and giving rise to peer-to-peer lending, buying groups, and virtual currencies such as Blippy, Twitpay, Trialpay, Plastic Jungle and, of course, Farm Cash. To further complicate things, all banks today offer direct digital access to your accounts. Currently, a credit card deal costs a merchant more than five times more than a cash one. No wonder then that when you shop with retailers such as freshdirect.com, the first message you’ll get is a handsome incentive should you opt to use direct debit from your bank account and save FreshDirect nicely.

All this is happening because one of the only things the internet did not change is the fact that we all prefer to pay less rather than more — and that’s the factor that will further push the credit card disintermediation. The average cost of a credit card transaction is around 1-3%, representing the fee and cost structure associated with this plastic-generation technology, while the overhead of pure digital direct transaction platforms on the internet is significantly lower. Unlike the late B2C music industry, credit cards are mostly a B2B model, which is the reason it is not yet as disrupted as the music industry is. This will change as more merchants and businesses find cheaper ways to enable transactions with their customers, and as more consumers will understand that a part of the cost comes out of their pocket. The consumers will also discover that using pure digital payment systems is indeed cheaper, and also faster and easier.

In a world where the internet democratizes financial services and shifts the control to consumers, and where mobile/contextual payments are expected to reach more than $600 billion in 2014, it’s surprising to see that Visa, MasterCard or Amex did not rush to buy or develop their own technologies. Well, perhaps they didn’t buy mint.com after Aaron Patzer called the credit card model “a tax on the economy” (it was bought by Intuit). But there are plenty other opportunities to buy or develop smart and friendly solutions, or even license existing solutions such as Amazon’s “pay phrase” or paying with your phone # + a 4-digit code.

I believe that the future of the credit card companies lies with brave new interpretations of the words making their category name: “credit” and “card.” “Credit”? Yes, but personalized and transaction-based, and with far greater transparency. Let’s begin by renaming the credit card act “the fair transaction act.” “Card”? Not for long — the plastic must be augmented and eventually replaced by modern, consumer-centric experiences. Visa, MasterCard and Amex must realize that they’re in the smooth, personalized transactions service business. If and when they implement this into their culture, they will be able to develop the services and products that will leverage their brands and footprint to effectively compete in this new reality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oren Frank is global chief creative officer at MRM Worldwide. During his career, Frank has worked with such brands as Honda, Volvo, Microsoft, Yoplait, Heineken, Axe and McDonald’s.

June 16, 2010

Thanks to a goalkeeping blunder in the 40th minute, the United States escaped with a 1-1 draw versus England on Saturday. The player responsible for the mistake, England’s Robert Green, was not only pulled from relative obscurity into the social media spotlight, but his error has helped to fan the flames of World Cup fever in the US.

According to a Nielsen analysis of online messages surrounding all U.S. and English national team players in the week ending Monday, June 14, Green garnered 11.4% of the total buzz, the most of any man from either squad. Nielsen’s study also found that his name was seven times more likely to appear in a World Cup message in the last week than in the prior seven-day period. It was the second most dramatic week-over-week change behind U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard, whose gutsy performance earned him “Man of the Match” status. His buzz levels soared more than 750% week-over-week.

“Nielsen’s analysis illustrates just how much the online community discusses these games,” said Pete Blackshaw, VP of digital insights at Nielsen. “Moments of greatness – or even the briefest of errors – can thrust any of these players’ names under the social media microscope for hours and days at a time and can have an effect that spreads far beyond the 90 minutes of game time.”

The contrasting week-over-week change in overall buzz levels for each of the two squads highlights the effect the game’s result had in each country. Social media discussions around the England squad dropped by 21%, reflecting the disappointment and subdued reaction to the game in England. In stark contrast, buzz levels around the US squad increased by over 250%, highlighting the delight with the result in the USA.

Blackshaw observes, “What’s happening in social media indicates that the error could help fan the flames of World Cup fever in the US and help the sport gain a mass share of mind it’s not previously enjoyed for a tournament held outside its own shores. If Green hadn’t made the blunder, the US would have lost their most anticipated match (it was the most watched first round game ever in the U.S.) and interest could have dwindled before it had a chance to really start going.”

USA and England Soccer Player Buzz Rankings
(Week ending Monday, June 14)

Rank	Player	Buzz Share* (week ending 6/14/10)	% Change in Overall Buzz Levels (week-over-week)
1	Robert Green (England)	11.4%	608%
2	Wayne Rooney (England)	9.1%	76%
3	Tim Howard (USA)	6.7%	765%
4	Clint Dempsey (USA)	5.0%	528%
5	Steven Gerrard (England)	5.0%	32%
6	Landon Donovan (USA)	4.8%	224%
7	David Beckham (England)	4.2%	28%
8	Joe Cole (England)	3.1%	-29%
9	Jozy Altidore (USA)	3.0%	127%
10	Rio Ferdinand (England)	2.9%	-73%
Source: The Nielsen Company *Share of online buzz, in English-language social media messages, among all USA and England players related to the 2010 World Cup squads

Despite a somewhat muted performance, English star Wayne Rooney still managed to receive the second highest levels of buzz last week among the teams’ players with a 9.1% share. Howard finished third overall with a 6.7% share, while the game’s goal scorers Clint Dempsey and Steven Gerrard rounded out the top five with 5% each.

It was also notable that David Beckham, who isn’t playing in the tournament, still managed to feature amongst the most buzzed players. It seems the obsession with the star plays out in social media just as it did with the TV cameras, which frequently cut to slow-motion clips of Beckham’s reaction to events during the course of the game.

There was one positive for England’s Green: the buzz levels for England’s backup goalkeepers, David James and Joe Hart, actually decreased in the last week – suggesting that even if fans are unsatisfied with Green, they weren’t eager to discuss the need for a replacement.

Nielsen’s latest study, conducted the week ending Monday, June 14, 2010, looked at English language World Cup-related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, video and image sites – including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – that mentioned at least one of the players related to the 2010 US and England Team Squads.

For more: Contact The Nielsen Company or read about our global consumer & media expertise.

Tags: Clint Dempsey, David James, England, Joe Hart, online buzz, Pete Blackshaw, soccer, Steven Gerrard, Tim Howard, USA, Wayne Rooney, World Cup

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American Banker  |  Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Square Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey defended the payments startup’s strategy after complaints from some customers over delays in the processing service and the revelation last week of a further lag in availability.

“I think we are entering a very complex industry and we have the right people in the company to adjust,” Dorsey, Square’s chief executive, said Monday in a telephone interview. “I think what this actually was, is we let our excitement get the best of us.”

Hardware shortages had already led to delays in the shipment of Square’s portable card reader earlier this year.

Dorsey wrote in a message to customers Friday that more delays are likely as Square shores up its fraud defenses.

“The way we are handling the risk of chargebacks and fraud is through transaction limits, but we have received feedback that those limits are too low,” Dorsey, a co-founder of the social media service Twitter Inc., said in the message, which was e-mailed to users and posted on Square’s website. “We are rethinking and expanding our underwriting infrastructure to address this issue.”

In the interview, Dorsey declined to give specifics on how the company plans to address these issues.

“We just decided we should take some time to rework those before we sent out any more swipers or engage any more people in the pilot or general rollout,” he said.

Square gradually has been expanding a pilot program of its service. The company provides users with a square-shaped card reader that attaches to a smart phone’s audio input jack. It charges 2.75% plus 15 cents for swiped transactions and 3.5% plus 15 cents for keyed-in, or card-not-present, transactions. Dorsey declined to say how many users are involved in the pilot program.

Dorsey said the company plans to begin shipping the device to general users this summer.

Square’s latest update partly acknowledged what many payments analysts have been saying about Square’s plans since it burst onto the scene last year: They failed to take into account the complexities of the payments industry.

“We’ve let our excitement get the best of us and have released parts of Square before they were fully baked,” Dorsey’s message said.

Aaron McPherson, a practice director with IDC Financial Insights in Framingham, Mass., said that Square “totally underestimated the market.”

Dorsey said his company’s mistake was releasing parts of the service too soon.

Restrictions on the size of payments that Square users can accept have bothered customers.

James Van Dyke, the president and founder of Javelin Strategy and Research in Pleasanton, Calif., said the limits are too low, making the service less reliable for merchants looking for consistent service.

Square has been gradually raising the limits of the pilot program participants as more information about them becomes known, Dorsey said.

On Friday the company released a new “activation flow” that lets users submit more information, such as the type of transactions they plan to conduct, their federal tax identification number and other details, he said.

Dorsey addressed criticism from users who are upset about the Square’s credit-check requirement.

“I don’t imagine the Square of the future will have a credit-check process, but right now it’s a good way to understand the … financial profiles of people who are” signing up, he said.