Do you think mobile money will be the next big wave in ecommerce? E.g. here in the U.S. people are mainly utilizing mobile payment services i.e. Venmo to reimburse each other for coffee or lunch but in East and West Africa people are using mobile money to pay for services or send money to family members or friends thru M-Pesa. With NFC (near field communication) and mobile money is there a potential market to offer better services or apps to make exchanging money simpler and less expensive?
It's the big wave right now for online development, it's hard for the normal or average webmaster to gain entry in to, all the major sites have app's and mobile sites... these are very popular. we will see further growth in mobile platforms and applications... i know a lot of people who only use their phones for the web and don't have a home internet connection... hence why mobile is the way forward. For ecommerce - I have not seen much in Australia yet.
I'm interested to know how you see mobile money actually interactive with eCommerce. I dont see this as being a large market because for online/ecommerce purchases either through computer or mobile device you are using paypal/google checkout/etc for quick transactions. How does NFC play into online purchases?
In some countries merchants cannot use PayPal, Google Checkout or even Amazon's payment services because of security restrictions imposed by payment processors or their country has been blacklisted. Look at Google Wallet for answer to your last question. Yes I know NFC equipment is expensive but it will cut down on people needing to carry a wallet or purse or even exchange large sums of money to carry on with their business transactions. In countries like Haiti and Somalia, residences can make daily purchases for their families or businesses by paying the merchant or wholesaler directly from the balance on their cell phone. This is all without using either PayPal or Google Checkout services.
I think mobile is definitely the next big wave. Mark Zuckerberg said he would guess that social shopping would be the next big thing to blow up, and it looks as though he hit it right on the mark. In correspondence with the fact that social shopping is taking off, and all the interesting statistics there are pointing to mobile as being the next big wave, the two together are like a power house. In this day and age, it's all about a fast, quick fix in the busy lives of the 21st century. Working with this information, in Moodyo, we are working hard to fuse the two, to create a personal shopping buddy for those (which are many) who use their phone to do comparison shopping and to get reviews.