Entries tagged with “mobile payments” from WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS
Bling
Nation, announced today at that Colo.-based Park
State Bank & Trust began offering mobile payments to its
customers and community through Bling Nation's Community
Payments Service Oct. 15.The Community Payments Service is a secure local debit network, driven by the tap of a cell phone, that enables banks and merchants to avoid costly traditional payments network. As a result, shopping locally is promoted and money is kept within the Woodland Park community. In addition, consumers enjoy the convenience and safety of tapping their cell phones to pay for goods and services without exposing sensitive, personal information. With each purchase, a SMS text message is sent to the consumer with account balance and any rewards program updates.
Zong announced that is has launched Zong+,
the first online mobile payment platform combining carrier billing with
credit, debit and prepaid cards.In addition to making online purchases through their cell phone bill, Zong customers will also be able to link any type of payment card to their Zong account through a one-time entry process and continue to purchase goods by simply entering their mobile number and confirming the security transaction code sent to their phone.
Amazon MPS enables tens of millions of Amazon customers to use the existing payment and shipping information in their Amazon.com accounts to make purchases from their mobile devices. To get started using the Amazon Mobile Payments Service, visit http://amazonpayments.com/mps.
Harris Interactive results surveying people about cell phone use and payments found that:
Nearly 4 out of 5 U.S. adults (77%) receive bills from cell phone and credit card companies, and of these adults, the majority (57%) trust credit cards companies more than cell phone companies when it comes to accurately billing them for a payment;
Older adults are significantly more likely than their younger counterparts to trust credit card companies more than cell phone companies (65% of those ages 55+ vs. 52% of those ages 18-34);
93% of U.S. adults (93%) own a cell phone, and nearly half of these adults (45%) think it's at least somewhat safe to make a purchase through their cell phone with 26% saying they think it's fairly or very safe to do so;
Assuming it was safe to make purchases through cell phones, nearly half of cell phone owners (46%) would be willing to make purchases this way.
NEC Corporation announced it that it has improved its mobile phone software that translates common travel words and phrases in Japanese and English. It automatically translates from Japanese to English and English to
Japanese.
The translation software doesn't need network connections or outside servers.
The software recognizes a word or phrase quickly and translates them in a few moments. NEC will continue to improve the software and services.
Smartphone app seller, Handango will be selling its apps in
Best Buy’s retail stores nationwide. The alliance includes Handango’s catalogue pre-loaded on app-plicable feature phones and App-Packs sold on microSD cards.
Handango’s catalogue will offer top-quality apps ranging from business and productivity to entertainment and games for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, and Symbian S60 smartphones.
Best Buy stores will also offer their customers a selection of Mobile App Packs featuring three favorite game titles for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm devices. Games will be pre-loaded onto Micro SD cards which eliminates the need for over-the-air or desktop downloads that require sync cables.
The Sprint Open Software Platform, will be opened first, via the Sprint Titan platform for Windows Mobile devices. It will give mobile developers the same codes, tools and resources used for desktop applications The platform is the first of its kind from an operator.
LogMeIn is offering a limited beta version of LogMeIn Ignition software
that gives Apple iPhone and iPod touch users access to
their remote computers and and work as if they were sitting in front of it. Features of LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone and iPod touch include:
- One-touch access to remote PCs and Mac computers, allowing users to access and control files and programs
- "My Computers" list that displays all available remote computers
- Full keyboard, mouse, zoom and scroll control using touch screen, consistent with other iPhone/iPod touch applications
- Securely saves login information
- Option settings for optimising the experience of connecting to and controlling the remote computer, including locking the remote computer's keyboard, blanking the screen of the remote computer and screen resolution
buzzd, a location-sensitive city guide and social network for mobile devices, has raised $3.2 million in a Series A Preferred Stock financing with BlackBerry Partners Fund, Greycroft Partners, Monitor Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
Digby, Digby, a leading mobile commerce service provider, has raised $5.5 million Series B Preferred Stock with the BlackBerry Partners Fund and existing shareholders.
WorldMate, a company that has paved the way for mobile travel innovation and serves over one million frequent flyers and road warriors around the world, has raised $8 million in a Series C Preferred Stock financing with BlackBerry Partners Fund, Motorola Ventures and AMC Communications.
According to the Google Mobile Blog, Goggle has released Gmail for mobile version 2.0
for J2ME-supported and BlackBerry phones. The rearchitected
the entire client to push all the processing to the background, greatly
improve the client-side caching scheme and optimize every bottleneck
piece of code we came across.So, what does this all mean for you?
- Overall performance improvement:
- Multiple accounts management:
Users can easily
switch between Gmail and Google Apps accounts.
- Multiple mobile email drafts:
- Powerful shortcut keys: QWERTY phone users can use shortcut keys. Hit 'z' to undo, 'k' to go to a newer conversation, and 'j' to go to an older conversation. See Menu/Help in the app for more shortcuts.
- Basic offline support: User can compose and read r most recent emails even when there is no signal. Also, any outgoing messages will be saved in the outbox on your phone and sent automatically when you're back in coverage.
Go to m.google.com/mail in your mobile browser to download the new Gmail for mobile for your phone.
Research In Motion announced the availability of the new BlackBerry Web Signals technology for the BlackBerry developer community.
BlackBerry Web Signals luses RIM's push technology to
allow online content providers to automatically notify BlackBerry
smartphone users when relevant content has been published and to allow
streamlined, one-click access to the online information.
With online content services powered by BlackBerry Web Signals, BlackBerry smartphone users can spend less time searching the web and more time connecting directly to the content that matters to them personally. Content providers will offer a range of services powered by BlackBerry Web Signals that enable customers to stay connected with news, weather, sports, entertainment, financial information and more.:
Companies that plan to use the technology include Dada Entertainment, Thumbplay and CBC.
Cell phone owners can use the iSync plugins from nova media to synchronize contacts and calendars with a Mac and more than 200 cell phone models from BenQ, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.The all new version 7.1 includes a preference pane to manage installation and update of cell phone plugins. This eliminates the need to download the complete iSync plugins everytime a plugin is updated or a new plugin is made available.
"The list of all available plugins and updates is now visible right from the preference pane and updated everytime iSync plugins is launched. There is no need to search the internet to see if a new plugin is available." states Jan Fuellemann, PR spokesperson at nova media. "The installed Plugins can be updated right from the preference pane. And iSync should launch faster, as we do not install all 200 plugins, but only the selected ones."
iSync plugins now supports English, French and German languages within the program and manual.
The slowdown in mobile communications will accelerate next generation of mobile software
According to JPMorgan, mobile phone handset growth for 2009 will drop by roughly two percent, primarily because consumers, particularly in Europe, are reluctant to upgrade their phones. Other market analysts argue that consumers are being put off buying new mobile phones because of the current economic climate.
This follows recently issued research findings from Globo, which show that 65 percent of users of mobile phones, who want access to emails or other online applications, aren’t ready to replace their handsets just to obtain it.
Dr. Joseph Coughlin, Director, AgeLab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Non-Executive Director, Globo, believes that new developments in mobile software are the logical next step in the development of the mobile society. He argues that current economic developments highlight the requirement for the market to adopt a new breed of open software that has the ability to turn every mobile phone into a ‘smart’ phone. The next generation of ‘all-in-one’ solutions will push, synchronize and share all a users’ different applications onto one single platform - regardless of the service provider or handset.
“We have already seen communications bring the death of distance and the next generation of mobile software will really represent the death of ‘place’ and the birth of a mobile society,” Dr. Joseph Coughlin said. “And this development will continue regardless of the current economic uncertainties.
Yahoo! has released developer previews of these new enhancements, further cementing Yahoo! Blueprint's distinction as the only platform enabling developers to create powerful and compelling mobile services that run seamlessly across thousands of different devices. Yahoo! is using Blueprint internally to develop iPhone applications and is in discussion with Apple on how to make Blueprint for the iPhone available to other developer
Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin allows developers to combine the richness of both Java ME and Flash Lite by encapsulating Flash Lite content in Java ME applications making content created by Adobe Flash technology appear as Java ME applications
Visual Voice Mail, a new application that lets customers manage their voice mail on their phones is now on the Voyager by LG from Verizon.
Visual Voice Mail provides display screen with one-touch access to listen to voice mail messages. Customers can also delete, reply and forward their voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions.
Customers can store up to 40 messages for 40 days -- double the storage capacity and nearly double the retention time of Basic Voice Mail. In addition, customers can create up to 10 greetings, as well as up to 20 distribution lists and 50 distribution members to receive messages.
Visual Voice Mail is available for $2.99 monthly access, per line, plus airtime or megabyte charges and messaging fees, depending on a customer's plan. Customers should take their Voyager by LG phones to any Verizon Wireless Communications Store to receive the free software update. Verizon
Google Mobile App starts with a single text box to search through your contacts and the web. As soon as you start typing, it scours Google and offers, typing suggestions, website suggestions or easy access to a previous search .
Google Mobile App even searches when typing occurs so that results are seen as soon as the typing is finished.
Over time, the App remembers the frequent tasks and nd puts them at the top. Finally, Google Mobile App also uses the My Location feature to detect the current location and show nearby businesses on a map. It also gives easy access to other Google Apps.
It is available for free in the IPhone App Store.
Currently, FriendMobilizer works on the Windows Mobile operating system. However, the generic software platform that was developed for FriendMobilizer will allow porting this application to other operating systems easily. The company is currently working on expanding FriendMobilizer to other social networks, as well.
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries tagged “mobile payments”.
