Welcome to our new Payments Insider newsletter, a morning email with the top news and analysis on the digital payments industry, produced by BI Intelligence.
PAYMENTS NEWS FROM MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2014. The four day Mobile World Congress tradeshow kicked off today and with it a host of payments news and innovations.
- Accenture launches a mobile wallet. The technology consultancy Accenture announced yesterday the launch of its new mobile wallet platform. The platform will include analytics and a recommendation engine. The wallet platform will use the NFC communication frequency to complete smartphone transactions at points-of-sale, but will also be compatible with Bluetooth LE beacons which are used for a variety of purposes, including to transmit offers to consumers' smartphones while they shop in-store. We think this solution will probably be white-labeled for Accenture's banking and retail clients. (Finextra via Accenture)
- PayPal announces fingerprint authentication on the new Samsung phone. On Monday we reported that PayPal would be the first payments app offered on Samsung's second generation smartwatch. Yesterday, PayPal announced that PayPal users who own Samsung's new phone, the Galaxy S5, would no longer need to enter their password in order to make payments with the PayPal app online or in stores. Instead, users need only swipe their fingers across the phone's biometric reader to authenticate the app and make a payment. (PayPal)
- MasterCard launches in-app payments. MasterCard announced that MasterPass would now be available for in-app payments. MasterPass is similar to "Log In and Pay With Amazon"— the idea is to remove the need for smartphone users to add payment information to every app in which they make purchases. (MasterCard)
- MasterCard acquires mobile wallet service provider. MasterCard announced that it acquired C-SAM, which is a mobile wallet software services provider. MasterCard's acquisition of C-SAM is meant to speed up its rollout of mobile wallet technology across the globe. Interestingly, C-SAM powers the telecom-backed mobile wallet initiative ISIS. (MasterCard)
- Fortumo makes carrier billing easy for developers. The One Platform Foundation provides Android developers with a software development kit called OpenIAB which allows app developers to create one payments platform for their apps that is compatible across multiple Android app stores — as opposed to creating a separate platform for each app store. (Besides Google Play, there are over 30 other alternative Android app stores.) The foundation announced a new partnership with carrier billing platform provider Fortumo that will make it easy for app developers to integrate Fortumo's carrier billing solution into their apps for distribution on Google Play as well as a host of these alternative Android app stores. (PR Newswire via One Platform Foundation<span)
A NEW REPORT ON CARRIER BILLING. Confused about carrier billing? In a new report from BI Intelligence we give a simple explanation of the complex carrier billing ecosystem including interviews with four top carrier billing platform providers. We size the market for carrier billing as method of payment for mobile digital content and explain why it has developers, app stores, and mobile carriers so excited. (BI Intelligence)
THE PROXY WAR AT EBAY HEATS UP. Prior to eBay's fourth quarter earnings call, activist investor Carl Icahn proposed that eBay-owned PayPal should operate as a separate business. In a letter posted online yesterday, Icahn criticized both Intuit-co founder Scott Cook and Andreessen Horowitz partner Marc Andreessen, both of whom sit on eBay's board of directors, for competing with PayPal. Cook's Intuit is a payments company and Andreessen is invested in Boku, a carrier billing company, as well as a variety of other payments companies. Icahn has nominated Jonathan Christodoro and Daniel Ninivaggi for eBay's board, both of whom work for companies under Icahn's control. eBay responded, calling Icahn's points "cherry-picked" and accused him of "mudslinging." (Shareholders' Square Table and eBay)
BITCOINS MISSING FROM MT. GOX. The Tokyo-based Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox appears to have lost $300 million worth of bitcoins. This comes after weeks of uncertainty after Mt. Gox halted withdrawals on the site citing technical problems with the site. The Mt. Gox site itself has gone offline for now. We'll have more on this story as it develops. (Business Insider)
CEO OF BITCOIN EXCHANGE RESIGNS FROM ADVOCACY GROUP AFTER HALTING WITHDRAWALS. The news about the potentially lost bitcoins comes on the heels of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles resigning from the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation, which is an advocacy group for the emerging payments network. This follows the resignation of Charles Shrem as vice chairmen of the Bitcoin Foundation following allegations of money laundering. (Bloomberg)
SQUARE IS NOW ACCEPTING DINERS CLUB IN CANADA. The company announced that merchants in Canada could now accept Diners Club payment cards on their Square points-of sale. This expands Square's card acceptance to Diners Club, American Express, Visa, MasterCard, and JCB. (MarketWired via Square)
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