Barclays objective with their mobile App ‘Pingit‘ is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to pay by their mobile devices and for corporates to collect m-payments as cost-effectively as possible. Having established Pingit as the leading mobile App in Europe with 1.8 million downloads of the App (star rating 4.5 on the App store), 2.3 million payments made at an average value of £70 and already 13% of consumer users are non-Barclays retail customers. They are now focusing the development of Pingit to make is easy as possible for corporates to, as they say: ‘Capture the value of consumers in m-commerce‘. They have released two new features - ‘Mobile checkout’ and ‘Buy it’ - which tackle a major problem and a major opportunity in m-commerce. 

The market for mobile buying is exploding. In the UK: 51% of adults already use a smartphone; 25% of all web traffic in December 2012 came from mobile devices; and verdict consulting predict that “Mobile as a retail channel is forecast to grow by c.55% by 2016, compared with 8% for online channels and 1.6% for physical stores.” Retailers and almost any type of company cannot ignore mobile buying.  

Mobile Checkout
The biggest problem for consumers when making mobile payments is the need to enter of long or large amounts of personal details, which can be challenging and time consuming on small handsets, and is often the reason for transactions not being completed. (Research by Harris Interactive has shown that while 68% of mobile and tablet owners have tried to make a purchase on a mobile or tablet, as many as two-thirds of those have abandoned the purchase due to issues with the payment platform.) Mobile Checkout‟ is optimised for mobile experience, with as few clicks as possible required to make a secure instant settlement via a „Pay with Barclays Pingit‟ button.

The retailer sets up their site with a new payment method - pay by Pingit - and to each page or in the checkout page adds a “Pay with Barclays Pingit” button. The Pingit user then scans the QR button:

Source & Copyright©2013 -  Barclays

and then they enter their five-digit code to approve the purchase. (This is the example Barclays provided. Not sure how many Pingit users will want to buy a ‘Heavy Duty Card Battery’??) 

The transaction is then confirmed:

Source & Copyright©2013 -  Barclays

This is optimised Mobile Buying from a web site. Pingit can also be incorporated into a retailer’s own App, see example below:

 

“Buy It“ opens up new point of sale channel 
The new Buy It feature in Barclays Pingit App enables instant purchases from traditional advertising collateral. By logging onto Barclays Pingit, consumers can buy products direct from an advert and other marketing collateral by scanning a Quick Response (QR) code (as in leaflet below): 

Barclays Pingit displays the product information – price, merchant information, delivery information and stock levels. Confirming these details enables a Barclays Pingit user to initiate an instant purchase, which can be delivered to a chosen address. Once confirmed, the customer receives a confirmatory SMS and email.

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Purchasing goods and services using mobile devices is growing far faster than any other payment method. Companies will have to accept payments via mobile. The only question is how. Pingit offers one of the fastest and most secure Apps for collecting mobile payments - it is the only act in Europe at the moment - and will minimise the number of uncompleted transactions. But what are the risks, the consequences of using a single bank payment system? (More to follow in items later this week.)