When thinking about breakthrough mobile technologies, mobile phones and their many capabilities are often top of mind. Because of cutting-edge developer software, enhanced browser capabilities and other mobile technologies, mobile commerce has evolved into a larger than life concept, similar to that of e-banking only a few short years ago.

When given a broader span of choices, consumers become more active and in charge – an experience every retailer is trying to tap into. Advancements in mCommerce empower consumers and give them the freedom to make buying decisions without being confined to a departmental store.

New technologies such as QR codes, NFC and social banking are taking mCommerce to another level. These tools are now capable of streamlining numerous aspects of consumers’ everyday lives and are giving retailers the opportunity to make the buying experience as personal and easy as possible. The common element, however still remains the consumer.

To put the significance of mobile commerce into perspective, online giant Ebay recorded that consumers purchased $5 billion worth of merchandise through mobile alone in 2011.

According to a Computerworld article, 60 per cent of brands have already implemented some type of mobile initiative. Enforcing this is the fact that Australia is ranked among the top 5 mobile markets for smartphones, with the latest ones being released with NFC. In Southeast Asia, research company GfK reports that Singapore and Malaysia are markets with deepest smartphone penetration, reaching a high of 88 per cent, translating to almost nine out of every 10 in the general population being a smartphone user. Of all the countries in the region, Indonesia is touted as showing the most growth potential. While it may be in the shade of markets like China, Japan and Korea, Southeast Asia accounts for one tenth of the world’s population, with Indonesia’s population alone some 240 million.

Widespread adoption of mobile platforms is what’s changing the consumers’ approach to commerce. Subsequently, the distinction between shopping on a handheld device and in a physical store is disappearing. Instead, the two channels are converging and individual purchases are becoming simpler than ever before.

This is not a passing fad either – mCommerce looks to continue its exponential growth for years to come. Estimates from Forrester Research stated that 53 per cent of mobile customers increased their mobile spending budgets in 2011. Based on sales and projections the world over, many analysts and other industry professionals agree that mCommerce is here to stay and will continue to thrive.

For retailers to capaitalise on the ongoing mCommerce boom, they need to stop relying only on in-store sales and take point-of-sale activity to mobile handheld devices. One recent example of a retail giant already making waves with this paradigm shift in mCommerce is Australian supermarket, Woolworths – or “Woolies”, as the locals call it.

What may appear to be a big gamble in the retail space is being thoroughly tested with a heavy analytic-based retail experience by Woolies. Moving outside the four walls of its physical stores, Woolies like many other retail giants have already introduced the next buzzword…e-tail! Woolies set up billboards across major junctions in the city that contain images and barcodes of products for mobile phone scanning. The Woolies mobile app allows customers walking by the billboards to browse, scan, order and pay for products via their mobile device and have them delivered to a chosen destination. Driven by analytical insight from consumer purchase behaviors, location-based data and contextual history, one can only imagine where this calculated risk will take Woolies in the retail and e-tail space.

Viewing mobile commerce only as a tool for payments is a common mistake that retailers and marketers can make. Combined with analytics, real-time management and supported by NFC and other mobile technologies, mCommerce is capable of unleashing a much more significant power. But does this mean that with such an integrated and seamless e-tail experience, there will be no more room for window shopping and mannequins? Only time will tell…

It has become an important tool to measure customer sentiment, engage customers and potential consumers with your brand and improve the customer service experience before they are escalated to other channels. But being such a sensitive industry with job cuts and interest rate rises, the big question is: are banks ready to make this big leap?

With social banking comes real time customer management, big data and a huge shift in how banks use social media to interact with customers!

The Australian and New Zealand banking and finance industry is starting to harness social media and the subsequent value of Big Data to improve client relations and customer satisfaction. An internal survey* conducted within the banking and finance sector recently states that 44 percent of respondents see social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to be the biggest contributor to unstructured Big Data. However, it is the analysis of these channels that 68 percent believe can provide better insights into customer behavior.

Contrary to the above, Ovum’s latest report, ‘the impact of social CRM on retail banking’, indicated some 60 per cent of the world’s retail banks have no plans to use social media, with only six per cent of retail banks currently using social media for customer queries.

One of the banks to take social media to a new level and translate it into social banking is Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, the world’s seventh largest bank. Being the first of its kind available within the Australian banking sector, the bank recently launched a new mobile app, which allows their customers to transfer funds to friends via their Facebook accounts or mobile device. This app is a perfect tool to provide services in real-time and to its mobile audience. But will banks be able to keep up with this shift to social banking and more importantly, will this come at a price for transaction banks?

A relatively novel concept, the opportunity for transaction banks that deal with banking procedures like payments, settlements and lendings is huge in developing and further utilising the principles of social banking. Transaction social banking comes with higher levels of customer convenience and has a wider appeal through social media channels, enabling customers to now add conventional banking services and integrating them with the real world.

Being fairly premature though, social banking could also bring with it challenges through subsequent issues including privacy, security and real-time customer management, but will this be shadowed by what Commonwealth Bank has already achieved? Only time will tell…won’t it?

*Sybase Technology Trends in Capital Markets Survey

Indonesia consists of 17,508 islands, about 6,000 of which are inhabited. 58% of the population lives on Java, the world’s most populous island. Other major islands include Sumatra, parts of Borneo, parts of New Guinea, and Sulawesi.

Indonesia has a mobile penetration rate of 90%, equating 235.8 million mobile subscribers, while only 50 – 60 million have bank accounts. An astonishing 30 million cell phones are sold in Indonesia each year, and active SIM cards are growing by 30 – 40% per annum.

As Indonesians embrace mobile technologies, one of the largest banks in Indonesia, PT Bank CIMB Niaga, has added mobile banking to its capabilities http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1096328. Built on Sybase technology, CIMB Niaga customers are now able to transfer funds, access loan statements and check account information. In addition to banking services, customers can access their online bill payment service via their mobile phone to pay utilities and other bills right from their online bank accounts.

To illustrate why the mobile channel is so powerful, look no further than neighboring Philippines, one of the world’s leading adopters of mobile commerce. According to the Asian Development Bank, 35% of Filipinos have mobile phones, while 95% of the rest have access to a mobile device through friends or family. Even remote, and traditionally inaccessible areas increasingly have mobile phone coverage. It’s been estimated that basic mobile phone banking services provided by rural banks are valued at P12 billion ($250 million) in the past five years.

Both countries are island nations, challenged with unique geographies, which mobile technologies ideally address. Both have a large populace under the poverty line, resulting in the under or unbanked currently being excluded from financial participation. Last but not least, both have young populations, with aspirations and entrepreneurial spirit. It doesn’t take much imagination to see Indonesia’s mCommerce market follow and eventually even exceed the success in the Philippines. Watch this space.

KYC doesn’t just mean fraud prevention; it also encompasses other key aspects of financial security, including; anti-money laundering, combating the financing of terrorism and preventing identity theft – All equally important reasons why your KYC processes need to be effective. There is no global standard for KYC regulations yet, but in many developed countries, most of the population has already been through some form of KYC (whether they’re aware of it or not!).

Mobile operators need to work with regulators to implement a KYC process that works for their country. Many mobile operators are required to perform KYC, however the KYC they perform is not necessarily up to the same standard as a standard bank KYC process.

Many operators, banks and even central banks have had to really look at different ways to implement KYC for mobile commerce, as they simply cannot follow rules that may be in place for a “banked” customer. While most people who have a history of banking, paying bills, driving and so on typically end up on databases that attest to attributes such as their creditworthiness, there are significant obstacles in identifying customers who are not in this category.

People who don’t use online billing or are not documented via trusted credit-reporting sources, make it harder to find reliable data about them. This makes it even more important for mobile commerce service providers to ensure that their KYC process is thorough and that they truly do “know your customers.”

As mobile operators in emerging markets have grown, so has their agent base. Many of the strict trading rules and regulations that govern retail in the established economies are still not present in the emerging markets. It is not uncommon for a high percentage of fraud to take place in the emerging markets, as the retail network itself is still in its infancy.

Hence, it is very important that the agent network is capable of performing the KYC process correctly and that the service provider minimises the risk of rogue agents poorly performing a KYC— or worse, performing outright fraud.

Perhaps your KYC implementation will consist simply of a photograph or a signature taken on a mobile device and stored in a database—or it could be a points system that requires some compliance; either way, it is a crucial step in the mobile commerce process. Time and care should be taken to reach out to regulators before you finalise your mobile commerce plan.

For more information, or to download the Sybase Mobile Commerce Guide 2012 – click here: http://www.sybase.com/mobilecommerceguide

The proliferation of smartphones and tablets as well as more ubiquitous 3G coverage combined with demographic and lifestyle factors, means consumers are increasingly willing to do their Christmas shopping on a mobile device.

A recent Sybase 365 survey conducted in conjunction with the Mobile Marketing Association found that more than half of Americans (62%) would be willing to make a purchase on their mobile device this holiday season if prompted by coupons, discount offers, text alerts, gift cards or loyalty points.

This presents a significant increase compared with a similar Sybase 365 survey a year ago, when only 32% of respondents said that mobile incentives would encourage them to make a purchase on their device.

While smartphone penetration in Asia Pacific as a whole is behind the US and Europe (Nielsen puts it at just under 20%), there is a lot of interest in upgrading, especially with Android devices bringing smartphones and tablets into the reach of Asia’s aspirational middle class.

It is also important to remember that Asia Pacific is a region of great diversity – some markets such as Singapore and Australia already have some of the highest smart device penetration rates in the world, making them an ideal test bed for mobile commerce and mobile marketing.

Mobile Ad network InMobi found in its recent Mobile Insights Report a strong correlation between mobile web browsing and consumers’ willingness to buy goods and services on their mobile. According to the report, a whopping 80 percent of Asian mobile Internet users already indulge in mobile shopping.

The report identified music/movies/games (43%), consumer electronics (24%), travel (12%), and apparel (11%) as the most popular products already being purchased from mobile devices.

Mobiles are also great for comparing prices, and finding places to buy. And as a recent PayPal study highlighted, a quick and easy purchase from a work computer or mobile phone can often be preferable to using your lunch break to visit the
shops (You might want to use your personal mobile if you have a large family to shop for. Three quarters of companies monitor Internet use at work.)

Undoubtedly shoppers are ready, but what about retailers? Unfortunately, when it comes to actually completing a purchase, mobile is usually not the easiest option. All too often mobile payment options are not yet available, insecure or inconvenient to use.

To truly harness the power of mobile commerce, more needs to be done to create a smooth shopping experience that encompasses the entire purchasing lifecycle from browsing, selecting and paying for goods and services regardless of device type or carrier.

On a more personal note, thanks for reading my blog this year. Any comments, ideas, feedback would be appreciated. Above all, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

India is set to become the world’s most populous country in 2030. Currently second only to China in population – the South Asian nation grew by 18m in the past decade alone. With 1.21b people, India’s population is now nearly equal to the combined populations of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

According to Boston Consulting Group, there are already 771m mobile subscribers in India, with 548m considered to be active, compared with the 240m people holding bank accounts. Most of the people in urban India have bank accounts but 90-95% still mostly use cash for their day to day needs.

While mobile commerce might be still nascent in the country, there is a tremendous opportunity in servicing both urban elites and the large numbers of the un- and under-banked in rural India via the mobile channel.

BCG’s analysis suggested mobile payment and banking transactions would reach $350bn by 2015, measured against approximately $235bn of credit and debit card purchases at present. Peer-to-peer remittances are expected to deliver $70bn by 2015, mostly as people in metropolitan hubs transferring funds to their families in rural areas.

Transaction volumes and fees might be small, but anticipated economies of scale have triggered a wave of notable alliances between banks and telco operators in India. (WARC noted the following recent partnerships: Bharti Airtel with the State Bank of India, Vodafone and ICICI Bank, Idea Cellular and Axis Bank.)

Another company that is keen to get a piece of the pie is Nokia. The handset manufacturer has started shipping mobile phones in India preloaded with its banking application, based on the Obopay mobile payment platform, in a deal with the Union Bank of India.

Considering India’s sheer seize as well as geographic and cultural diversity, it’s hard to imagine a national mobile payment scheme in India any time soon as we find in smaller countries like Austria today.

I would rather expect a number of payment ecosystems to co-exist for a significant period of time, until regional leaders emerge, possibly along historical and cultural fault lines.

It’ll be also interesting to see if any home grown players founded by India’s well educated and entrepreneurially minded IT community will be able to capture significant market share.

One thing is certain: As India cements its position as an economic powerhouse on the world stage, greater financial inclusion via the mobile channel will have a positive flow on effect on productivity, innovation and living standards.

What are your predictions for India’s mobile payment and banking market for 2012 and beyond?

Over at Australian competitor St George Bank, executives told The Australian newspaper that customers using mobile devices for financial transactions already equal the activity level of 112 physical branches.

These examples highlight once again how much of a driving force the banks are for mobile commerce in Australia. In contrast to countries like Austria, Qatar or Malaysia, where telecommunications operators have taken on a pioneering role, banks have been setting the scene down under for a number of years now.

A recent SAP-Sybase 365 poll among banking and finance professionals in Australia showed more than half (54%) of respondents believe mobile payment services will be solely run by the banks.

The survey also indicated that Google’s push into the mobile payments space with NFC support is seen as the biggest competitive threat to the banks’ dominance in the market (28%), followed by over the top payments providers such as PayPal (20%) and iTunes’ proprietary music and apps payment service (16%). Twelve percent view credit card schemes as a competitive threat, and only 2 percent see mobile operators playing a leading role in this market.

More than a quarter (26%) of respondents stated that their organization already offers some form of banking services for mobile phones, while 40 percent are planning to introduce mobile payments services in the next 12 months. Existing services encompass bill payment via mobile phones (19%), as well as payment services for real world goods and services and NFC ready person-to-person payments (18 % respectively).

While there’s no doubt that banks are willing to invest in technology and marketing to defend their payment stronghold against the Google’s and Apple’s of the world, a successful mobile commerce ecosystem requires an advanced level of coordination between key stakeholders, such as financial institutions, merchants, mobile operators and handset manufacturers. This sentiment was shared widely among the survey respondents, of whom 69% identified the lack of coordination between stakeholders and incompleteness of the mCommerce ecosystem as the main inhibitors of greater mobile payments uptake in Australia.

What do you think? Can the banks go it alone or do we need more collaboration in Australia?

There are several billion people on the planet who still do not have access to basic banking services. This presents a clear opportunity for laterally minded banks, governments and even non-banking institutions, to look at offering banking services to this vast segment of the population. The big question is how do you offer banking services to a market segment that does not typically have a sustained income of value? You need to offer banking services in a new way, and on platforms and systems that are not only economically viable, but profitable. This is where the mobile phone comes into play – a ready made payment instrument, typically containing ‘stored’ funds, purchased by the customer, which can be the customer’s access device to your bank.

When you look at the penetration of mobile phones, the statistics are encouraging. Even in the poorest nations, mobile phone penetration tends to be significant. While adding millions of low value clients to a core banking network does not seem to excite many bankers, however, if you could implement a low cost ‘micro’ bank that does not require huge investment, this market immediately becomes more attractive. At Sybase 365, we work with a number of financial institutions and mobile operators to bring banking services to the unbanked.

Just last week, Bangladesh-based Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) won the Mobile Money Award for Best Bank-Led Program at the Mobile Money Global Conference and Expo in Dubai. The Mobile Money Awards annually recognise innovative and forward-thinking organisations.

In a nation where only 13 per cent of the population has bank accounts,
DBBL has used Sybase 365 mBanking platform to reach the 45 per cent of rural and unbanked Bangladeshis who are mobile phone users. Money remittance capabilities allow expatriates to easily remit money to the mobile accounts of their families, who can make a withdrawal at the nearest retailer or cash point via their mobile devices.

In Malaysia, we work with mobile communications provider Celcom, a subsidiary of Axiata Group Bhd, to power AirCash, the Asia Pacific region’s first USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) service. While the service is available to over nine million customers in Malaysia, mobile banking is particularly appealing to Malaysia’s migrant population who seek secure, instant and cost effective ways to send money home, for example to Indonesia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, prominent examples include MoneyBox Africa and M-PESA, mobile-phone based money transfer services that allow customers to deposit and withdraw money, transfer money to others, pay bills and make purchases. M-PESA, first launched by the Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, has since expanded mobile money services into other developing nations. Another successful deployment, MoneyBox Africa, created by a consortium of financial institutions in Nigeria, provides a similar array of mobile money services.

While central banks and governments have struggled for years to find ways to include everyone in what is typically being coined ‘Financial Inclusion’, case studies such as DBBL prove that the mobile phone is a viable alternative to traditional ‘brick & mortar’ and online banking channels, to bring basic banking services to the world’s poorest.

Is this a missed opportunity for NFC? The answer, without question, is yes. Given the huge impact the iPhone has had with consumers all around the world, the inclusion of NFC would have added significant momentum to the push for the widespread introduction of the mobile payment technology.

Recently in Australia, we’ve seen the NFC juggernaut gaining substantial momentum. According to a recent story in Computerworld Australia, industry heavyweights Visa and Westpac bank are supporting the rollout of NFC with initiatives already underway to rollout the required infrastructure, in addition to small-scale pilot programs.

Whilst we often talk about NFC in the context of mobile payments, the Computerworld story raises another usage case, and one that could potentially be more compelling to someone like Apple, or for that matter any of the other major smartphone vendor; the provision of information – in this case tourist information – via NFC. Mobile payments aside, the ability to provide information via NFC is currently limited only by imagination.

Is it the end of the world that iPhone 4S does not include NFC? No it isn’t, but it would have been nice. Given their typical update cycles, with any luck, we’ll see an iPhone with NFC within the next 12 months. Should this be the case, then it would likely force the hand of the other smartphone vendors into catch-up mode and within another 12 months, almost all smartphones would be NFC equipped.

Assuming NFC payment capability were to reside in the pocket of most smartphone users within two years, it’s then a matter of the payments industry building and promoting the technology to drive adoption. Simply giving consumers access to NFC will not ensure adoption. Anyone sent an MMS lately?

It would be remiss of me here not to acknowledge the untimely passing of iPhone creator and technology industry visionary, Steve Jobs. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

The main challenge is getting everyone to agree, and the big four banks are just one component of what is needed in Australia. In fact, according to research conducted by Sybase 365 earlier this year, the lack of coordination between key industry stakeholders such as mobile operators, merchants, payment processors, banks and developers is viewed as the key inhibitor to widespread adoption of mobile payments. Perhaps a ‘council’ can solve this problem, and I certainly hope so.

Even where I live, in Singapore, where it typically only takes one of two companies to say do it; and it gets done, we still don’t have NFC. So the challenges Australia faces are still huge, with or without a council.

My main worry is, should a council be formed, how long would it debate on the issues before laying out an NFC model for the country? Let’s hope it would not take years (like the years of pilots we have had so far). That said, this is a great chance for Australia to take a lead in the region by getting all the stakeholders to agree on a standard and a way forward, and do something for the consumer for once.

As a consumer, I would love to see NFC realised. I’m looking forward to the day when I can swipe my phone at a retailer and get through my transaction quicker; who does not love that? The retailers in particular would, I’m sure. The idea of one NFC device that I could use to pay for my tram ride in Melbourne, a winery in SA, and a retailer in NSW, sounds perfect. However, the way things are going now in Australia, we may well have a bunch of disparate NFC cards and schemes across the land, which that will still require me to carry a dozen or so cards in my already burdened wallet.

It does not have to be this way. Imagine, one NFC device, my iPhone for example (yes, I know it’s not NFC-enabled yet!), connected to my back-end payment instruments (Bank Account, Credit Card, etc) with all my various loyalty schemes (airline, hotel, etc). I could ditch at least two dozen or so cards in my wallet and simplify my life (a bit).

The idea is good idea for the consumer, but then so is high-speed broadband. I already have a fiber cable to my house in Singapore, but my house in Australia will have to wait until at least 2021. Hence my concern for NFC in Australia, even with the formation of a council, is that the country will yet again lag behind the rest of the world, digitally speaking.

So, what do you think? Will the formation of a council help or hinder the widespread adoption of a unified NFC mobile payment system in Australia? Are there other hindrances that need to be looked at, such as hardware, for example?