Today's Top Stories The U.K. mobile payments system Paym, which has the backing of most major U.K. banks, launched this week with the ability to serve more than 30 million users, announced the Payments Council, which oversees the Paym system. Banks participating in the system are Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander and TSB. That number is expected to expand this year, increasing the number of eligible users to 40 million. At launch, 360,000 people had registered for the program, the Guardian newspaper reports. The Paym system enables people to send and receive payments to a current banking account using a mobile phone number. A user can send up to £250 per day using Paym, although some banks offer a higher daily limit, the Payments Council explains. Users can make payments for goods and services by selecting the phone number of the person or business receiving the payment from a contacts list or manually typing it. Users can receive payments by registering their mobile phone number with Paym and indicating the bank account they want to use for the mobile payments. The Payments Council estimates that 1 billion Paym payments will be made by 2018. According to research by Consumer Intelligence, one-quarter of U.K. bank customers said they plan to use Paym, and that figure rises to 39 percent for those 18 to 34 years old. On the other hand, nearly half said they would not use it because of security concerns.
For more:
- see the Payments Council announcement
- read the Guardian article
- check out the Paym site
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After a slow start, mobile couponing is gaining traction among U.S. consumers. eMarketer forecasts that mobile coupon users will increase from just over half of adult digital coupon users in 2013 to 83 percent of U.S. adult digital coupon users in 2016. The increasing use of mobile coupons is being driven by greater smartphone and tablet adoption, and the growing number of digital channels offering coupons accessed on mobile devices, such as mobile apps, daily deals and group buying sites, email and social networks, explains eMarketer. Of mobile coupon users, tablet users will be more likely to redeem a coupon than smartphone users this year--80.2 percent versus 75.4 percent--according to eMarketer. Tablets are used more frequently than smartphones for in-home digital purchases, which increases tablet users coupon use. Most smartphone mobile coupon users redeem their coupons in brick-and-mortar stores, the publication explains. A recent study by AlixPartners finds a similar enthusiasm for mobile coupons, which is fueling a rise in mobile shopping. in In the firm's most recent survey, nearly three-quarters of smartphone and tablet owners reported that they use mobile shopping features, up from 65 percent at the end of 2012. "Digital and mobile coupons have become an important shopping tool for consumers and appear to have a significant impact on what consumers choose to buy and at what price, across all age groups," AlixPartners observes. The study finds that 61 percent of smartphone/tablet owners report regularly receiving mobile or digital coupons; 26 percent bought an item they did not plan to buy because they received a coupon; and 23 percent bought an item they were interested in from a physical retailer who offered a lower price. "When consumers are aware and informed, adoption of digital couponing appears to be very strong. The value to consumers is real and measureable in their resulting retail purchase decisions," says Bob Hedges, managing director at AlixPartners.
For more:
- read the eMarketer article
- check out the AlixPartners release
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While one might expect that the mobile gaming market is primarily male, research finds that the "gaming culture has continued to evolve with a nearly-equal split between male and female gamers." That is the finding of research by Amazon and Harris Interactive, which teamed up to determine how changing demographics with men and women specifically affect the mobile gaming world. In an email to FierceMobileIT, the firms noted that "the industry has placed a lot of emphasis on addressing the equalizing audience split between men and women." But they wanted to learn more about the different behaviors that men and women exhibit while playing mobile games. "In the survey, we asked both sexes if they would feel competitive in certain gaming scenarios, how they would share their top scores (if at all), whether reviews could convince them to purchase a mobile game, what ways they would complain about bugs/glitches, and more," the firms told FierceMobileIT. Based on analysis of the survey results, three top insights were identified: Men are more competitive than women in mobile gaming "Men who play mobile games are more likely to feel more competitive than their female counterparts when a friend or family member is better (e.g. getting better scores, beating the game more easily) at the time they play most often (53 percent to 45 percent respectively)," the firms said. Women are less social about their gaming experience Women are less likely to share their top scores in mobile games than comparative men (43 percent to 53 percent), share screenshots of top scores with friends/family (6 percent to 10 percent), or complain about bugs/glitches (52 percent to 69 percent) in their favorite mobile games." Women are leading the trend towards Free-to-play (F2P) "Female mobile gamers prefer free to play games more than their male counterparts (84 percent to 77 percent), and are less likely to pay for a game (27 percent to 40 percent)." So what the lessons in all this for mobile game developers? A few suggestions offered by Amazon and Harris Interactive include: - Developers should consider the balance of leaderboards and achievements within their games. For example, females may be more apt to work towards achievements as self-motivation vs. getting to the top of a leaderboard.
- If developers have a game that they think is more female friendly, it might make sense to publish it as F2P.
- Developers may use the data as rationale to change their marketing strategies. If they have a female-focused game and see that reviews aren't really helping drive sales, they may want to allocate more marketing funds to another means of getting the word out for their title.
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