45% of Middle East, North Africa Mobile Customers Use Mobile Web

Some 45 percent of Internet users taking part in a mobile usage survey across the Middle East and North Africa told Spot On PR that they used their mobile phones to access the Internet. Of those, 85 percent stated that they have downloaded applications for their mobile phones, while 27 percent claimed to download more than one mobile app per week. About 20 percent of mobile Internet users also claimed to have paid money for a mobile application download.

About 45 percent of respondents use their mobile phones to access the Internet, rising to 50 percent among Internet users in the United Arab Emirates. Fully 71 percent rank email as biggest mobile data activity. Other popular activities on the mobile Internet were social networking (34 percent), news & weather (29 percent), sports news (29 percent) and hobbies (25 percent).

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Indian Bank Launches Mobile Banking

The Karur-based Lakshmi Vilas Bank has launched a real-time fund transfer facility using mobile phones. LVB is the first private sector bank in South India to offer this facility, Managing Director and CEO P R Somasundaram says.

LVB customers can register with their nearest branch.

Lakshmi Vilas Bank launches Interbank Mobile Payment Service

Airtel Introduces Cash Payment by Mobile

India's largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, is offering its customers the ability to make payments through mobile phones.

Bharti Airtel customers can deposit cash in their "airtel money" accounts at retail locations, then make payments at retail sites and pay utilities using their mobile phones. The merchants and utilities have to be on the Bharti Airtel network, and be part of the money transfer program.

The feature is as much about customer loyalty and value-added services as it is about incremental revenue Airtel can make by sponsoring the program.

India’s Airtel Introduces Cash Payment by Mobile Phone

“PayNearMe” at 6,000 7-Eleven Stores, Supports Mobile Money Transfer and Payments

PayNearMe offers a take on mobile payments that is more a “virtual cash” play than anything else, likely to be most successful with consumers who prefer paying cash to third parties, especially when buying online digital goods or make other payments, and do not own or cannot get, credit or debit cards. That could include teenagers and others. See http://www.paynearme.com/press_releases/press_release_11_16_10_B


Using only their mobile phones and the new, free PayNearMe Card, consumers can complete transactions with a growing list of payees, including Amazon.com and Facebook, Progreso Financiero, MOL AccessPortal (MOL), m-Via, Lexicon Marketing, LLC, Adknowledge’s Super Rewards, Money to Go and SteelSeries.

More than 50 percent of U.S. adults prefer cash for payment and a quarter of U.S. households lack credit or debit cards. That creates the opportunity for secure and convenient ways to complete remote transactions with cash.


The PayNearMe card is one such solution. When buying something on online site SteelSeries, for example, the consumer would go through the regular check-out process, but instead of clicking Visa or MasterCard, they would choose PayNearMe.  See http://emoney.allthingsd.com/20101223/how-one-company-wants-to-make-cash-cool-again/?mod=ATD_skybox


Then he or she would print out a barcode and bring it to any 7-Eleven location. The clerk scans the barcode and collects the cash. As soon as the balance is paid, SteelSeries will be notified and the item will be shipped.

If a user does not have a printer, or is making a money transfer, users go to a 7-Eleven where plastic PayNearMe cards–similar to gift cards–are available.


They call customer service and say the code on the back of the card, how much money they’d like to transfer and where they’d like to transfer it. The 7-Eleven clerk then scans the card, collects the cash and prints out a receipt with all the legally required information.


Unlike gift or prepaid cards, PayNearMe Cards simply enable mobile cash payments in any amount from $.01 to $1,000. There’s no stored value, no hidden fees, no unused balances.


In some ways, PayNearMe is sort of a mobile “money transfer” service, in part a micro-payments service.

Starbucks Mobile Payment Demonstration

The Starbucks mobile payment system might accurately be described as consumer experience and loyalty program, more than a technology breakthrough. It uses a minimum of new in-store or consumer technology and an initially-simple way of replacing a credit card swipe with a bar code reading.

 The 2D barcode in the Starbucks Mobile Card app, which is no longer a QR code in the latest version, currently appears to encode only the card account number, effectively acting as a replacement for the magnetic stripe, notes FaceCash CEO Aaron Greenspan.

"Right now from the POS viewpoint only encoding the account number works well because it doesn't require any additional POS customization," says Greenspan. The advantage is speed: the transaction is fast because it's treated effectively the same as a card swipe, which is already pretty fast.

Global Tablet Shipments to Grow 12x by 2015

Global shipments of tablets will grow to 242.3 million units in 2015, up by a factor of more than 12 from 2010, a new IHS iSuppli report says.

Media tablet shipments will grow to more than 202 million units in 2015, up from 17.4 million in 2010. Shipments of PC-type tablets—i.e., tablets that have full PC functionality implemented via PC operating systems—will climb to 39.3 million units in 2015, up from 2.3 million in 2010.

Total shipments of tablets will amount to 242.3 million units in 2015, up from the newly finalized IHS iSuppli estimate of 19.7 million in 2010.

Global Tablet Shipments to Rise by Factor of 12 by 2015

"Do Not Track" Implications

To be sure, a web version of the "do not call" list " is likely to get fairly broad consumer support. But "do not track," which will allow consumers to block detection of their website visits. Like many regulations, the notion is logical, but will have unintended consequences. For developers, application providers and many content sites, it means a more difficult revenue-generating challenge, since behavioral targeting would be impossible for the percentage of web users who opted into the the "do not track" program.

Some consumers will appreciate the privacy, of course. But the trade-off will likely be exposure to non-targeted or poorly targeted advertising, rather than ads that more-closely align with each consumer's actual interests and needs.

A "Do Not Track" law would also make it difficult for agencies to accurately report return-on-investment to clients, others will note.

The same sort of conundrum occurs because of network neutrality rules that forbid packet priorities for consumer broadband access services. While some will point to the competition-enhancing aspect (applications and services owned by ISPs cannot be favored over independent apps and services of the same type), there is a trade-off. Consumers cannot set their own priorities for apps and services.

Though it is possible to design an access service to give top priority for bandwidth, and other performance-enhancing measures, to apps the consumer designates as "the most important right now," network neutrality rules allow businesses, but not consumers, to make such stipulations.

A consumer might like to create and enforce rules that give top priority to VoIP sessions and videoconferencing. during business hours. During evenings, those settings might switch to give entertainment video top priority. Software updates might always be given the lowest priority, with email and web surfing in between.

"Do not track" rules are likely to have the same sort of predictable consequences. Some apps and features of value to consumers will be sacrificed. And there will be some negative consequences for some in the content delivery ecosystem, as well.

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