Curious about mobile payments, but tired of reading the small print? Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson has compiled a collection of how-they-work videos. Included are videos from Bling Nation, PayNearMe, Square, BOKU, Intuit GoPayment, PayPal Mobile, VivoTech, Oberthur, MobilePay, MocaPay, and FaceCash.

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PlaySpan has announced the launch of UltimatePay Mobile, a “virtual currency and micropayments monetization widget for leading smartphone platforms.” The initial private beta launch will support HTML5, and is designed to work on all Android* smartphones, as well as Nokia phones with WebRuntime installed.

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Doctor’s Associates, the parent company of SUBWAY, and Think Computer Corporation have announced that FaceCash will now be accepted at certain SUBWAY locations in California. FaceCash is a mobile payment system that allows consumers to use their cell phones to make purchases at the point of sale. “FaceCash gets its name from its unique security process. During a purchase, the consumer’s face appears on the merchant’s register to verify identity.”

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mopay has announced that it “now connects its mobile payment platform to 80 countries worldwide. With almost 100 percent coverage in Europe, North and South America and Australia, mopay recently expanded its footprint to South Korea and India, further extending its reach in the Asian market.”

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Lightspeed Research has announced the results of a new study showing that half of mobile users in the U.S. have made purchases from their mobile phone. “Phone apps or games were the most popular items purchased via mobile, music and ringtones coming a distant second and third.” The survey also includes survey data on mobile payment preference, cut by age and gender. The full survey results are available for download.

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Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson will speak October 29th at the UW Law School Conference – “Mobile Payments: Global Markets, Empowered Consumers and New Rules?”. The one-day conference will explore the benefits of mobile payments to consumers – both in developed and developing markets and the types of regulatory approaches that will increase consumer adoption and provide incentives for businesses to compete in this emerging space. Carol’s panel will focus on the question: “What Will it Take to Make Mobile Payments Mainstream in North America?”

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Monitise has announced its enhanced technology platform which “incorporates a range of mobile banking and payment services to deliver fast, secure financial management by mobile phone across the world. The platform enables financial institutions, mobile phone networks, service providers, payment companies and processors to offer a wide variety of Mobile Money services in both developed and emerging markets.” The platform offers the following products: * Monitise Mobile Wallet – setting up a virtual wallet on a mobile handset to enable mobile payments and commerce for people without bank accounts, and managing the associated agent networks * Monitise Mobile Payments and…

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Beijing-based mobile network operator, China mobile is reportedly interested in investing in Africa to boost services in rural areas. Though the company has not specified neither the region, nor its potential acquisition targets on the continent, it has an ambitious goal to “push business for mobile payments” as stated by Jianzhou Wang Chairman of company.

It would be recalled that recently, the operator concluded a deal that enabled it to acquire a 20% stake in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, a move expected to help boost its wireless payment and finance operations.

According to Dataxis Intelligence, China mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator with its 539 Million subscriber base of which 7.6 million using 3 G services at the end of March 2010.

The market for NFC (Near Field Communication) mobile payments in the U.S. is in the nascent stage with an adoption rate of only 1.7%; this represents a huge opportunity for early movers offering the same. Adopting NFC mobile payment will open new revenue channels for banks as well as mobile operators as more than 94% of the U.S. population owns a mobile phone, and 60% of these have a card slot in their mobile phone. With the help of NFC technology, banks will be able to tap micro transactions made by cash, representing around 20% of the total transactions in the U.S. This will also help banks to capture the growing GEN Y population as well as the huge underbanked and unbanked population.

Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the key predictions that herald long-term changes in approach for IT organizations and the people they serve for 2010 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond.

These predictions were selected from across Gartner’s research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions. The trends and topics they address this year speak to the changing balance of power and focus in IT. Gartner analysts said last year’s themes of shifting ownership and revenue flows continue, becoming more pronounced and more sharply focused. As the macro-economic environment adjusts to a new balance between supply, consumer demand and regulation, the focus of this year’s top predictions has expanded to encompass shifts in the way that users interact with IT.

“As organizations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT,” said Brian Gammage, vice president and research fellow at Gartner. “With greater financial and regulatory oversight for all IT investment decisions, few organizations will be unaffected.”

“For many organizations, the economic and budgetary challenges of 2009 drove important changes in the general governance of IT investment decisions, accelerating the trend toward greater accountability and transparency,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and chief Gartner fellow. “With a strong emphasis on business-case justifications, chief financial officers (CFOs) assumed a more active role. Although most organizations enter 2010 preparing for a return to growth, this financial oversight is unlikely to be lifted anytime soon. For IT leaders, greater fluency in the language of business has become a requirement.”

Gartner’s top predictions are intended to compel readers to action and to position themselves to take advantage of coming changes, not to be damaged by them. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 and beyond include:

By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
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