Mobile payments to total $984 million in 2014

Mobile payments to multiply sixfold over the next three years, from $162 million to $984 million

Financial trends and news by Ronny Kerr

Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/1751

Wallet in my left pocket, iPhone in my right--it’s the way it has always been for me and probably won’t change for a long while. It’s all I’ll ever need: money and identification on the left, friends and information on the right.

However, it would be ignorant to think that the left pocket is maintaining its relevance. It isn’t.

As smartphones and other powerful mobile devices increasingly proliferate the world over, mobile payments will grow more prominent in tandem. The worldwide transaction value of mobile payments, which reached $162 billion last year, will total $984 billion by 2014, according to a forecast from Yankee Group, an IT research and analysis company.

“Mobile payments” encompasses any kind of purchase made with a mobile device, be it completely within the device (online) or between the device and external systems. That includes mobile banking, international and domestic remittances, contactless cards, mobile coupons and near-field communications.

Now, no one can doubt that paying with a phone could be really convenient, but is it more convenient than credit card or payments from desktop computers? After all, there’s the increased risk of fraudulent activities and other security issues when you pay with a mobile device.

Accenture, a management consulting firm, conducted a survey that asked “tech forwards” in Asia, Europe and the U.S. about those very issues. ("Tech forward” is defined as someone over 18 who owns at least four networked devices and uses at least four Internet services.) No matter which of the three regions respondents resided in, consensus seemed to be that there are indeed privacy and security concerns when paying with a mobile device.

In line with those concerns, tech forwards in Europe and the U.S. did not agree that the mobile phone is more convenient than other forms of payment, with only 26 percent saying so. Similarly, only 29 percent “welcome the day” when a mobile device is their primary form of payment.

Oddly enough, while tech forwards in Asia were nearly as concerned about security and privacy issues, they still responded favorably about the convenience of mobile devices, with 69 percent saying they are more convenient than other forms of payment. Of all Asian respondents, 64 percent say they “welcome the day” they primarily pay with a mobile device.

Personally, I find the hesitance of Europeans and Americans kind of amusing because innovations in technology are necessarily pushing us to a world where we actually do pay for most (if not all) things with our mobile device. Resisting this would be like resisting registering for social networks: it’s obviously far from impossible, but not really convenient. The security issues will never be completely ironed out, but have they ever?

Source: Vatornews

Accenture report IDs 3 primary models for electric vehicle charging infrastructure

By Heather Clancy | February 23, 2011, 6:35am PST

Summary

Which came first, the electric charger or the electric vehicle?
A new Accenture analysis about electric vehicle charger infrastructure pilots and business models suggests that the availability of public electric vehicle charging technology remains a sticking point when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. There are three factors that the consulting firm is watching closely this [...]

Which came first, the electric charger or the electric vehicle?

A new Accenture analysis about electric vehicle charger infrastructure pilots and business models suggests that the availability of public electric vehicle charging technology remains a sticking point when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. There are three factors that the consulting firm is watching closely this year, since many analysts and firms have held up 2011 as a potential break-through year for mainstream electric vehicle adoption: the investment cost and uncertain potential for returns, the unpredictability of charging habits, and the relative scarcity of vehicles, which means we don’t know what technical challenges away.

Accenture’s report, called “Changing the game: Plug-in electric vehicle pilots,” offers perspective into a number of public electric vehicle charging trials that are going on around the world. So far, there are three clear models for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Accenture finds:

1. Public infrastructure (primarily driven by municipalities and local governments, which aren’t necessarily expecting a return on their investment other than covering basic costs)
2. Private infrastructure (this is the technology you might find at a mall or at a parking garage, which will be charged at a premium than public infrastructure)
3. End-to-end (this is like a service model, where the consumer will be charged some sort of fee under a long-term contract, which covers battery swapping and charging)

There are also some early “lessons” summarized in the report that should be considered by anyone who is considering investment or involvement in electric vehicle infrastructure. Those insights include:

• The impact on the electric grid needs to be considered more closely, but so far so good: Early pilots have show minimal impact on the grid.
• Early on, at least, consumers seem to prefer charging in the privacy of their own home.
• More standards are necessary for a true public charging infrastructure to emerge.
• Most electric-vehicle drivers (so far) are males in their early 30s and 40s, who own a second vehicle.
• Early indications are that electric vehicles don’t necessarily need to be charged daily.

Says Accenture analyst Melissa Stark, one of the report’s authors:

“The consumer is the most important factor in determining which business models will succeed. The capabilities needed to deliver these models will be the same across the world, but the players that choose to develop them will vary. This means that standardization of technologies is urgently needed to support the varied involvement of service providers. And greater efforts will be required to improve understanding of consumer preferences.”

Source: ZDNet

Accenture Maps Eight Trends That Will Drive Future of IT

Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, has identified eight emerging trends that will drive the future of information technology.

These eight trends are expected to challenge long-held assumptions about IT and will redefine the business landscape, according to Accenture .

“We took a look around the corner and saw a world of IT that barely resembles what enterprise computing looks like today,” said Gavin Michael, managing director of R&D and alliances, Accenture, in a statement.

“The role of technology is changing; it is no longer in a support role. Instead, it is front and center driving business performance and enriching people’s lives like never before,” Michael added.

According to the “Accenture Technology Vision 2011,” report, the most significant trend is that the age of viewing everything through an application lens is ending. Platform architectures will be selected primarily to cope with data volumes and the complexity of data management, not for their ability to support applications.

The relational database will make way for other types of databases like streaming databases, according to Accenture.

IT and other businesses will view application services as utilities that can be procured off the shelf. The role of application and data will be reversed, with data becoming the platform that supports application services.

Accenture predicts that there will be an evolution of social media into social platforms. Company websites may longer be the first port of call for customers. Social identities will become valuable to businesses than the traditional and isolated information they get when an individual registers on their corporate website.

Conversation, which is emerging around cloud computing, will become pervasive that the term itself becomes superfluous. Software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) in combination with internal applications will cement IT’s role as a driver of business growth, according to Accenture.

The role of people in data security will decline, and will be replaced by automated capabilities that detect, assess, and respond immediately.

Individual privacy will take center stage as a result of increased government regulation and policy enforcement.

Companies that continue to view analytics as a simple extension of business intelligence will be underestimating analytics’ potential to move the needles on the business, according to the report.

IT is evolving from a world that is server-centric to one that is service-centric.

The Accenture report also says business process design is driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction. Tomorrow it will be driven by the need to create superior user experiences.

In December last year, Accenture announced that Magneti Marelli selected the company for the design and development of the company’s in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), telematics and embedded software initiatives.

Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf

Source: InfoTech Spotlight