Author: BWild

Mobile commerce takes off in Brazilian market

| March 22, 2016

Using smartphones for purchasing a range of different kinds of items has become very popular in Brazil.

A recent study conducted on the mobile commerce market in Brazil has shown that shopping over smartphones is becoming increasingly popular within the country, particularly among young consumers who are shopping for the first time.

The research indicated that throughout 2015, there was an increase of 47 percent in m-commerce shoppers.

This is a dramatic rise in the number of people who are turning to mobile commerce in order to buy the products and services they want. The firm behind the study, E-bit, determined that shopping over smartphones made up a considerable 14.3 percent of the country’s online trading in 2015. When compared to the same figure from the year before, when it was 9.7 percent, that represents a very meaningful rise in this trend.

The research also indicates that 22 percent of online shoppers in Brazil have used mobile commerce.

Mobile Commerce Growth in BrazilThat said, the same research has also underscored the fact that 88 percent of online shoppers still prefer to buy products and services over their desktop and laptop computers. While they might use their mobile devices for researching products and doing price comparisons, the final purchase still tends to be made over traditional computers the majority of the time. This indicates that consumers prefer to use multiple devices to complete the entire shopping journey from the point that they decide they want something and start to look into it, to the point that they actually pay for the items in their digital shopping carts.

In 2015, e-commerce in the Brazilian market generated $10.9 billion in sales, which was an increase over 2014 by 15.3 percent. This shows that there has been a significant trend leaning toward purchasing products and services on digital devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers.

That said, the news when it comes to online shopping and mobile commerce isn’t all positive. Recent research also published by E-bit but that was produced by a separate study has shown that they predict the lowest growth rates in online shopping in 15 years as a result of the current economic situation being experienced in the country. Brazil is in a recession at the moment and consumers have been cutting back on their spending as a result of this condition.

First contactless mobile payments in India to be launched by ICICI Bank

| March 18, 2016

The financial institution claims that it has chosen NFC technology in order to enhance transaction security.

ICICI Bank has recently announced that it will be offering the first contactless mobile payments service in India, after having looked into the various options and decided that NFC technology is the best way to keep transaction data safe throughout the process.

This will make it possible for consumers with one of their credit or debit cards to pay using a smartphone.

Of course, this will require that consumers who want to use the contactless mobile payments will need to shop at a store or restaurant with an NFC reader terminal. At the moment, they are in the vast minority in India. Still, the bank has decided that this is the best way to ensure that consumers keep their sensitive data safe throughout the transaction process, which is what drove them to make this choice. Users of the bank’s Pockets app and who have the right type of device will be eligible to use this service.

This represents the first time that Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology is used for contactless mobile payments in India.

ICICI Bank - Contactless Mobile PaymentsThe HCE tech makes it possible for consumers to be able to use their smartphones as a kind of virtual card so that payments can be made without having to bring the actual plastic credit and banking cards into the shop. The cards compatible with this service are those that have been issued by ICICI Bank, including debit, Visa and MasterCard.

The virtual credit and debit card data is stored in the secure cloud server from the bank. Just as the service requires a merchant’s point of sale to include an NFC reader, it also means that shoppers who want to use these mobile payments will also need to have NFC technology enabled phones. Most smartphones in India do not have this tech, at the moment, which means that there will likely be quite a limited user base upon the initial launch of this service.

Contactless mobile payments using NFC technology are growing in popularity among smartphone wallet companies around the world, including tech, credit card and other financial giants. Among the most well known are Apple Pay and Android Pay.