Several Mobile Payments Revenue Models Exist

There are at least a half dozen (and possibly more) business models suitable to a mobile payment services or applications. But that’s just about where the similarities end. Here are four of the broad models, as seen by Alistar Fairweather, Digital Platforms Manager for the Mail & Guardian Online.

The first approach is to enable mobile phones as payment terminals. That’s what Square does,
allowing smart phones to accept credit card payments, anywhere, at any time.

Another approach is to use a mobile as a replacement for a credit card or debit cards. Much of the hope revolves around use of near field communications to allow mobiles to communicate with payment terminals, but there are perhaps dozens of other possible communication methods. Whether the mobile service account is the source of stored value or whether the mobile is linked to a user’s debit, credit or bank accounts, this is the way most people tend to view “mobile payments.”

But not all mobile payments interest is focused on what users can do when paying for goods or services at a retail location. There is a large, and apparently growing need to transfer money between people, using only a mobile device, or allowing people to use their mobiles to pay bills, such as utility bills, transportation or education bills. That is what drives growing launches of mobile peer-to-peer mobile payments services such as M-Pesa.

A related approach is to use stored value or prepaid accounts of some sort for retail payments. The analogy is a gift card, which is pre-loaded with a certain amount of money a user can spend, so long as the retailer is equipped to handle the transaction. It will be quite familiar to most consumers who now buy prepaid airtime for their mobile devices, for example.

Fairweather doesn’t specifically mention it as a “payment” system, but one other obvious revenue model is linking a mobile payment system to mobile advertising and promotion, loyalty accounts or offers of various types. The revenue then does not flow directly from the payment transaction, but from the value of advertising, marketing, incremental retail traffic or continued customer loyalty that results in incremental purchases.

http://memeburn.com/2011/06/4-very-different-mobile-payment-services/

Google is Winning

"I would point out one thing. In tech, whenever you see companies teaming up and forming partnerships and alliances against one company, it always means the same thing: that company is winning," says Dan Lyons.

In some ways, that is quite a turn-about from the situation of just a few months ago, when people were speculating about whether Google had gotten too big to innovate effectively.

The real reason that everyone hates Google all of a sudden

Mark Cuban Says "End all Software and Process Patents"

Mark Cuban thinks the patent system is so out of whack that the only rational solution is to abolish the ability to file a "process" patent, or software patents.

"End all software patents," he says. "Don’t make them shorter, eliminate them."

"I have no problem with software being copyrightable just as it always has been," But process patents should be abolished. Some of you who have read such patents probably will agree.

My Suggestion on Patent Law

"I’m Quitting Phone Calls," TechCrunch Writer Says

Not too many people who work will have the precise set of work issues and tasks that lead TechCrunch writer James Altucher to detest work-related phone calls. His job requires intense scanning of content related to technology, and most phone calls are interruptions. He also points out a problem many others see, namely that text-based communications are easier to handle. He also is a non-native-English speaker who has to deal with lots of English content, so that is a factor as well.

"Barring some absolutely necessary phone calls, which will boil down to only a couple per month, if that all voice-based communication for professional purposes is out of the question, including Skype, Viber, mobile and landline calls," he says. "You can call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure it will be awesome, although, to be fair, it’s a fairly easy decision for me to make."

Some of us who do similar work would agree at least partially with the sentiment. We might argue that the richness of Web-based content and text-based communications now allows less reliance on voice communications. Some of us wouldn't go quite so far, but for a different reason.

Rarely does a text "press release" covering any significantly-complex product actually succeed in explaining what something "new" is, well enough so a writer can, with confidence, explain "what it is" or "why it is important." In part, that's by design. The traditional way press releases are developed is that they are just teasers to provoke an interview.

The problem with that traditional approach is that many of us do not have the time to conduct many such interviews anymore. We simply have to cover so much material that the "release" has to do all the work. That's tougher. So, no, some of us will not be dispensing with voice calls, because we really cannot.

But that probably isn't the main point. The big switch is how little I actually use "voice" anymore, and how little of it really is required to get my work done. Of course, like Altucher most of my work involves "searching" for new developments to write about. That can be done almost exclusively with text and Web tools, these days.

I don't find this to be true for sales professionals, though. They still lean on voice.

I’m Quitting Phone Calls | TechCrunch

Verizon's Wireline Unions Go on Strike

About 45,000 Verizon Communications workers walked off the job Aug. 7, 2011 after negotiators failed to reach an agreement on a new contract, marking the first strike at the telecommunications giant in 11 years. That represents about half the workers in Verizon Communications wireline business units.

Most of the workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, are in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States, where most Verizon customers are found, and handle the wireline side of Verizon's business.

Read more here.

Google+ Circles: Privacy as Social Media "Dark Matter"

Google SVP Vic Gundotra says there is a good reason much content posted by female Google+ users does not seem as prevalent as material posted by males. "Sometimes if you're not careful, when you're just observing from outside, you mistakenly might be saying, 'Oh, the women aren't commenting.' But it's just a matter of taste," Gundotra says. "They may be doing it to Circles, and you're just not seeing it."

"You'll visit a woman's profile, and it will look like there is no activity. But if you're in one of her Circles, it's filled with content," says Gundotra. "When people share, they are two to three times more likely to share to a Circle than publicly. That means most of the excitement on Google is dark matter; it's not visible."

Google+ and "Dark Matter"

HTC Purchase of Dashwire Appears to Represent Patent Protectiion

In another example of the importance patent portfolios now represent, HTC Corp. agreed to acquire all of the shares of U.S. mobile Internet applications company Dashwire Inc. for as much as US$18.5 million, in a move that could give it more tools in possible future patent litigation against competitors, including Apple.

HTC Purchase of Dashwire Could Help in Patent Suits - WSJ.com (subscription required)