Monthly Archives: May 2012

Who Owns the Wallet Owns Big Data

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MasterCard launched its mobile wallet services at the keynote in New Orleans at the CTIA Wireless Show. Big news? Maybe, if you read between the lines.

The service is comprised of three components. PayPass Acceptance Network, which includes PayPass Online and PayPass Contactless, will help merchants accept electronic payments across multiple channels while giving consumers a simple check-out process. The services will be expanded to the point-of-sale over time, enabling the delivery of targeted offers, coupons and enhanced loyalty programs.

I think there is a battle raging that is not part of the press release. It is a battle to own the financial relationship with the consumer – Apple, Google, Visa, ISIS, all want to be the landlord for the secure credentials. The winner owns big data and all the money that flows from this.

In this scenario, MasterCard is the landlord, Gemalto is the property manager and the tenents are retailers, brands . . .  anyone who needs to leverage the wallets data down stream. Consumers secure credentials come with a full identification profile and of course their purchase behaviour.

Steve Mott and the retailers that are attempting to create their own competitive wallet is in direct response to this exact data scenerio.

MasterCard’s open door policy to third parties is a Trojan strategy to be the gatekeeper — everyone wants this privileged role. The dust has not settled on this two-sided business debate and will not for many years. But remember, the guy who owns the gateway owns big data.

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Mobile Privacy Experts: Consumer Trust Vital

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Gary Schwartz, president and CEO of Impact Mobile and chair of the North American Chapter of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, tells Street Fight that building trust should be the core of a retailer’s mobile and online strategy. “The key to engaging with the consumer in a trusted relationship in a retail environment is you don’t want to engage with people who don’t want to engage with you,” says Schwartz. “The outreach should be focused on loyalists with a retailer’s brand. It’s about your loyalists putting up their hand and saying ‘hey I want to talk to you because I love your product.’”

“You need to make a call to action on all your touch points, and say if you love my product opt in. Once you have that, you have to let them opt out at any time,” Schwartz adds. He believes the strategy can be outrageously successful: “If you’re on target, if you are talking to them and they love your product, they will stay with you. It will attract 10x over your email channel.”

WATCH INTERVIEW

Building trust requires developers and businesses to implement a strategy that give consumers a better idea of what information is collected from them, and what choices they have to control it. Regulators have encouraged developers and businesses to engage in “privacy by design,” that is, incorporate transparency and protections for consumers on their information as products are built and launched.

Regulators have become increasingly aggressive in addressing what they perceive as abuses in the use of consumer information from mobile devices. Already, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Research in Motion and other major application stores have agreed with the California Attorney General to require all developers to provide privacy policies with their applications, include a process to display such policies in their stores, and report developers that are not complying. The California Attorney General’s office warned it will take enforcement action if the privacy policy process is not in place within six months.