Email Suddenly Gets More Relevant

PushSend · May 25, 2011

Interesting read.

Email Suddenly Gets More Relevant as Wireless Payment Heats Up

Bank of America, Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase are collaborating on a service that will let people use their checking accounts to send money to each other, via an email address or cellphone number. Granted, consumers have a choice of texting or emailing and given the immense popularity of texting a significant portion of these transactions will be sent that route. However as these various services proliferate and more consumers adopt them, email is bound to be an important channel for consumers to keep track of their expenditures.

It is a welcome shift for the space, which has been battling perception that social media has rendered email irrelevant or even dead.

Another example is provided by the mobile payment start-up, Square, which just expanded its offerings with a more elaborate point-of-sale system for retailers and a way for consumers to set up accounts at merchants. Here too, receipts are sent via email. In theory the revamped system by Square has potential for marketers, Azita Arvani of the Arvani Group told the E-Commerce Times.

"The merchants use the Register application to process the payment and then ask the buyer to opt in to use the Card Case application,â€ she said. "Once both the merchant and the buyer are in the Square system, they can supposedly have an easier transaction flow which would include payments, loyalty cards, couponing and so on."

Whither NFC?

How quickly or not, wireless payment is adopted depends on a few factors, though, with the most important being the standardization of near field communications. With reports of Apple dithering of whether it will include it in its next-generation phone it is unclear what its fate will be.

And Google â€¦

On the other hand, Google is expected to announce details of a smartphone payment service this week that is based on the technology, the Wall Street Journal reported. This service will require merchants to upgrade or buy equipment that costs from $100 to $350 that will enable the NFC. Among the first participants, according to the Journal, are Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and the Subway fast-food chain.
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source: MarketingVox.com

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