Square Pushes Into Consumer Mobile Payments
Square, known best for its small business mobile payment acceptance solutions via an iPhone dongle, has expanded its consumer payment options through the re-launch of its mobile wallet.
Formerly known as Card Case, Square’s new cloud-based mobile wallet app has been re-branded as Pay with Square. The new offering includes features that make it easier for consumers to find merchants that accept Square as a payment option. This move puts Square and PayPal head-to-head in the mobile payments arena, both with new offerings geared towards helping consumers pay, and merchants accept payments, via mobile devices.
Card Case, Square’s cloud-based consumer mobile wallet app, is being renamed Pay with Square and now includes new features to make it easier for users to find nearby merchants who accept mobile payments via Square. The move puts PayPal and Square in direct competition with similarly positioned merchant and consumer mobile payments solutions.
Mobile Commerce Daily covered the news in, “Square Pushes Into Consumer Mobile Payments with Revamped App” today. Chantal Tode interviewed mFoundry Co-Founder and CEO for the article. You can read the full article on Mobile Commerce Daily here.
Is Google Wallet Struggling?
Mobile Commerce Daily wrote an interesting article today about some employee moves on Google’s Wallet team (including the resignation of Vikas Gupta, head of consumer payments), suggesting Google might be having a hard time with its mobile payments rollout. mFoundry Co-Founder and CEO, Drew Sievers, was interviewed for the story and shared his perspective on Google Wallet’s traction in the market thus far.
mFoundry Gets $18M from Intel, MasterCard, Motorola
VatorNews covered mFoundry’s announcement of its latest round of funding today. In the article, Vator founder and CEO observes that while mobile payments is not yet ubiquitous, that may change as more investment is made in mobile payments technologies. mFoundry’s recent funding round is an example of such an investment in mobile payments.
Read Bambi Francisco Roizen’s perspective in the VatorNews article here.
mFoundry Raises $18 Million from MasterCard, Intel for Mobile Payments
GigaOm has written about mFoundry’s latest funding round, stating how mFoundry has emerged as a leader in mobile banking and now serves more than 600 banks and credit unions. mFoundry is expanding its mobile banking solution to support mobile payments through a partnership with MasterCard, the lead investor in this latest round of financing. Intel Capital, Motorola Mobility and FIS were also named in the GigaOm article.
Intel, MasterCard, Motorola Mobility Put $18M in Mobile Banking Platform mFoundry
mFoundry, a company that powers mobile banking solutions for more than 600 banks and credit unions nationwide, is announcing a new round of funding, to the tun of $18 million, from MasterCard (which led the investment), Intel Capital, FIS, and Motorola Mobility. This bring’s mFoundry’s total funding to $40 million.
Read Leena Rao’s post about the announcement on TechCrunch here.
Building Mobile Payments on Mobile Banking: MasterCard and mFoundry
Javelin Strategy & Research’s Mary Monahan wrote a brief post about the MasterCard/mFoundry partnership on the Javelin Strategy & Research Blog. In the post, Mary points out that mobile bankers are more open to mobile purchases, they make more frequent purchases and their average mobile purchases are for higher dollar amounts.
Read Mary’s post on the Javelin Strategy & Research Blog here.
MasterCard, mFoundry in NFC Deal
MasterCard said its cardholders will soon be able to use their smartphones for contactless payments, using mobile banking technology from mFoundry. The San Francisco company is a provider of mobile banking and payment services to more than 550 credit unions and banks. Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard said it also has “made a strategic investment in mFoundry, further strengthening their collaboration in the emerging field of mobile payments.”
Read Marc Rapport’s coverage of this announcement in Credit Union Times here.
MasterCard, mFoundry Partner to Expand Mobile Payments
The collaboration will combine MasterCard’s PayPass technology with mFoundry’s mobile financial services platform, which is used by more than 560 U.S. banks and credit unions. The resulting service will allow customers to make payments by simply tapping their NFC-enabled phone on any PayPass terminal at a merchant check-out.
MasterCard Expands mCommerce Presence Via mFoundry Partnership
MasterCard has teamed up with mFoundry to offer banks and credit unions more mobile payment options. According to both companies, the partnership will make mobile payments accessible to more consumers. In addition, MasterCard has also made a strategic investment in mFoundry to further its place in the mobile commerce space.
Read the complete article by Rimma Kats on Mobile Commerce Daily here.
MasterCard in mCommerce Tie
Yahoo! Finance has a great write-up about our recent MasterCard partnership announcement by Zacks Equity Research. According to Zacks, the partnership is expected to be a “valued advancement in the rapidly growing mCommerce arena.” Zacks further added that it believes the ease of access and less time consuming nature of mobile banking would make it [mobile payments] very popular among mobile subscribers.