Author: xcui

 

Many of us are familiar with Android Pay and Apple Pay. Today I have learnt a lot from another notable mobile payment systems named iBeacon technology.

iBeacon technology is fast gaining momentum and paving the way for efficient and seamless solutions across multiple domains today. Beacons are being used in almost every sector, from retail to events to education, to build and improve multiple solutions from indoor navigation to loyalty programs to pushing contextual notifications. One of the latest applications of beacons today are for proximity payments.

Proximity payments have experienced significant growth in the recent past and is projected to witness rapid growth in the near future. According to the latest proximity mobile payments forecast from eMarketer, the total value of mobile payment transactions in the US will grow up to 210% in 2016. Beacons are among the newest additions that are helping drive sales and digitized consumer payments in the FinTech world.

A successful beacon deployment was at the Levi’s stadium in Santa Clara, where 1000 beacons were deployed. As a result of the beacons and the Levi’s Stadium app, visitors were treated to an enhanced experience from easy navigation to ordering food and making payments. This beacon deployment led to an increase of $1.2 million in revenue, through the mobile app.

Source:

https://blog.beaconstac.com/2015/11/5-beacon-solutions-driving-change-in-mobile-payments/

 

Today’s consumers, business partners and key stake-holders want information on-demand. For many organizations, providing this data quickly and efficiently places a considerable strain on employee resources. Here is 4 ways to improve efficiency.

1. Integrate your business systems and applications
   Bridging the gap between disparate systems and online web services enables organizations to have business applications that ‘talk’ to each other to reduce process bottlenecks and remove repetitive data entry tasks.

2. Dynamically optimize employee productivity
   Employee productivity can be optimized by intelligently routing out of system workflow tasks to individuals or teams to gather valuable decisions and response feedback.

3. Automate everyday company documentation

Automating the creation and distribution of reports, statements and other documentation can remove unnecessary administration, safeguard your organization against human errors, increase the visibility of information and assist with improving management decision making.

4. Introduce external real-time business notifications
   Identifying potential issues before they happen enables organizations to make informed decisions which are based on critical data events.

Not only limited in the financial information system, the optimal goal for most of the system is to achieve automation, which comes with high speed and accuracy.

Source:

4 Ways To Improve Business Performance When Using SAP Business One

Mobile banking can be defined as using “a mobile phone to access your bank or credit union account. This can be done either by accessing your bank or credit union’s web page through the web browser on your mobile phone, via text messaging, or by using an app downloaded to your mobile phone.”

The main impediments to the adoption of mobile financial services cited by some consumers continue to be a preference for other methods of banking and making payments as well as concerns about security. Most consumers with bank accounts reported using a mix of online and offline channels to interact with their financial institution. For those who have adopted mobile banking, use of the mobile channel appears to complement their use of other banking channels. The security and privacy of personal information remain common concerns for mobile phone users, and many smartphone users reported taking steps to guard against possible risks.

The feature of mobile financial services is keep developing to meet customer’s demand. Nowadays, we can even deposit checks by scanning it via banking app on phone, check which category do we spend money at, instantly transfer money. Fintech do change our daily life and bring our convenience.

Source:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/consumers-and-mobile-financial-services-report-201603.pdf

“Payments happen where people are and where they interact. As social media is exactly doing this, bringing people together and make it easy for them to interact, it is therefore clear that payment and social interaction belong together.”

This is echoed by Massimiliano Alvisini, the regional vice president Northern Europe & Iberia at Western Union. Definitely, mobile payment keeps expanding its services scope to meet customer’s demand and the market development trend, while social media can provide a huge consumer base. I think WeChat is a successful example which supports the above statement.

WeChat is a popular messaging app in China. Compared with WhatsApp or Facebook’s messager, WeChat has a mobile wallet feature that can process both online and in-store payments. As a social media, WeChat has built a large user relationship, which enabled it to developed money transfer service with higher security confidence and convenience to transfer money among users (friends). Specifically, users do not need to type in any payment info. Users just need to open the dialog between friends, and click the transfer tab to send money. Besides sharing stream among friends, users can share a group purchase order via stream that friends form a group to place an order with great discount.

 

Source:

http://www.paymenteye.com/2016/04/05/blockchain-social-media-and-mobile-keeping-track-of-payments-at-money2020/

Big changes are in the wind. Oracle is committed to the Cloud solution for all their applications, the acquisition of NetSuite further demonstrates that the cloud is the destination.

Most of the finance teams spend up to 85 percent of their time on collecting and validating data, developing reports, and maintaining and updating spreadsheets, which leaves little time to develop real insight. Oracle ERP Cloud helps modernize and automate finance operations, and you can:

• Confidently expand into new markets with full multi-GAAP, multi-currency, multi-entity support
• Deliver multidimensional reporting from a single source of truth with shared reference data
• Eliminate the complexity of intercompany tax and payment transactions with a centralized architecture
• Comply with local regulations and reporting requirements using built-in, country specific localizations Many Oracle ERP Cloud

Based on my personal experience, SAP is detail oriented while Oracle ERP cloud is much more simplified and visualized. Oracle ERP Cloud provides real-time graphical indicators on dashboards and work areas to help draw users to items that require immediate action. Users can glance at the infotilets in Oracle ERP Cloud for a quick status summary, and then drill down for details about these metrics.

 

Source:

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/enterprise-resource-planning/five-reasons-new-look-erp-cloud-3094646.pdf

No industry moves faster than financial services sector. FinTech is coming to represent technologies that are disrupting traditional financial services, including mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, and asset management. The Fintech report 2016 has listed down some financial industry trend and investment.

1.     Payment Services Industry Trends

Tremendous funding rounds by Chinese Fintechs surged Fintech funding in 2016. Geography of fintech funding has changed as the rise of China and the move of European investments out of London. The payments segment is much more mature than other fintech areas.

2.     Banking Fintech Trends

Many retail banks are foregoing brick-and-mortar branches and ATM networks in favor of services delivered exclusively online and apps. However, digital-only banks are facing major problems of customer acquisition as more of them flood the market and customers hesitate to leave a well-known, established bank for a startup.

3.     Investment & Stock Fintech Trends

Robo-advisors are rapidly becoming the biggest disrupter in the investment and stock space. BI Intelligence forecasts that robo-advisors will manage $8 trillion in global assets by 2020.

4.     Currency & Markets Financial Services Trends

Blockchain, powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, can accelerate and automate transactions, create multiple copies of a ledger simultaneously, and enhance transaction security.

Source:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fintech-report-2016-financial-industry-trends-and-investment-2016-12

 

 

It is nothing new that people go dinner and split the bill on multiple credit cards. However, it takes much more time for the cashier to process the separate payments than it used to do, especially after the retail industry shifting to use chip card reader. In the past, it took a few second for cashier to swipe a card and print out the receipt. To combat fraudulent transactions and get rid of the liability of payment paid by a counterfeit credit card, many retailers have upgrade their equipment with stronger security chip reader, replacing the easy-to-forge magnetic stripe. Thus, the second difference of waiting time can be enormous for booming restaurants and retail stores.

As a quicker alternative, mobile payments have pouring into the market. A test shows that it takes about 9 seconds from inserting a chip card to printing a receipt, while it takes about 4 seconds for mobile wallets. But the actual transaction time behind is the same for chip card as mobile payment, which can be partly explained by, most chip reader terminals have an extra screen procedure telling you the payment is approved and you can remove the card.

 

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/personaltech/in-the-race-to-pay-mobile-wallets-win.html?_r=0

While smartphone manufacturer keeping improving its feature and performance, so as thousands of applications, the technology revolution continue expanding services scope to meet the market demand and providing benefits to customers. Apple, Android, Samsung are top three mobile pay app providers, and rivals to seize market share. Although more customers have reported using Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay have adoption rates on par, which are competing to win more customers by its distinguish payment features.

Conducting reliable secure process for transaction is still a priority topic that tech companies working on. Apple Pay and Android Pay must exclusively rely on Near-Field Communications (NFC), which requires newer terminal equipment at the checkout counter. Instead, Samsung invested in Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), which transmits card information to older terminals that only accept magnetic stripe cards by creating a magnetic field similar to that of a mag stripe card as it’s swiped. However, it is not a significant factor in adoption because Samsung pay users reported that they use NFC payment more often than MST mode.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/06/apple-android-samsung-whos-winning-the-mobile-pay-app-race/

While online sales channels have grown dramatically over the last few years, the retail market keeps developing more and more shopping options to bring benefits for both customers and merchants. For example, “Buy online – pickup in store” is an online-offline integration that reflects the change of customer shopping behaviors and the development of mobile payment. The new frontier, mobile payment, offers customer a convenient way to pay at retail terminal and online via smartphones and its market expected to approach $800 Billion in 2017.

Nowadays, several mobile payment technologies have been introduced to the customer and widely adopted on the market, such as Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay. With a mobile wallet, customer do not need to carry a couple of cards and cash, and can go shopping without making a long stopover in the checkout line. However, it also creates new security vulnerabilities and risk that mobile payment developer need to solve. The solution depends on not only software end but also hardware end, as an integration of encrypted chip design, encryption algorithms, and multi-factor authentication methods. Adding different biometric technologies can increase efficiency and security in user verification, payment process, and data transfer.

Source:

http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2016/12/27/global-mobile-payment-market-expected-to-approach-800-billion-in-2017/

The ecosystem of global fintech continues to grow actively, from blockchain technology to mobile wallets, as the capital market has poured huge investments into the fintech startup sector. While most fintech entrepreneurs are dominated by western countries historically, Asia’s fintech landscape is developing differently in last five years by four factors.

1. Geographic Fragmentation.

Countries with small market need to obtain license to do business in diverse foreign markets.

2. Growing Consumer Class.

The middle consumer class is growing and E-commerce retailers is guiding customers to go cashless.

3. Unbanked Populations.

50% of the un-banked are in Asia. Cash payment is still common in used because of not having enough money to deposit after living consumption, high flexibility to use in rural areas, and lack of trust in banks.

4. Mobile penetration.

The mobile phone penetration rate in India has reached to 80% and 99% in Indonesia. However, consumer credit reference is still relatively new to the financial markets in Asia. Data is recorded on the mobile devices, but how to utilize existing data to predict creditworthiness is an opportunity and challenge for fintech companies.

 

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/falgunidesai/2016/04/29/asias-fintech-potential/#3fd37b7d72a3