Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘PayPal’

Walmart Steps Up E-commerce Presence in China

Posted in Ecommerce, General News / Technology, Retail, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

What happens when the world’s largest retailer decides to plant an e-commerce flag in the world’s most populous country?  We’re about to find out.

Walmart announced this week that it has finalized an agreement with Shanghai’s government to set up an office in the Chinese commercial city that will serve as headquarters for the retailer’s entire e-commerce operations in China.

As part of the deal, the parties will work hand-in-hand on a training program for e-commerce personnel to accelerate the overall development of online retailing in the country.

“The scale of online sales in China is expanding rapidly and is projected to match U.S. online sales in the next few years,” said Wan Ling Martello, Walmart’s executive vice president of global ecommerce and emerging markets.  “We are very optimistic about China’s e-commerce market and its growth potential. With Shanghai as our Global eCommerce’s China headquarters, we look forward to offering Chinese consumers a wider selection of quality products at good value with a great online shopping experience.”

The new office in Shanghai will report directly to Martello and Walmart Asia’s president and CEO, Scott Price.

Though Walmart has operated physical storefronts in China since 1996, it wasn’t until recently that it set its sights on establishing a stronger online retail presence in the country.  As part of that strategy, the retailer bought a minority stake in the Chinese e-commerce site Yihaodian last month.

Of course, Walmart is hardly the first U.S. retailer or e-commerce group to invest in China’s potentially huge online retail market.  This year alone, Apple, Gap, PayPal and Groupon have all set up shop there, and for good reason, too.

China’s Internet Network Information Center, the arm of the Chinese government that looks after the country’s web infrastructure, estimates that there were 161 million online shoppers in the country at the close of 2010.

Meanwhile, reports from Forrester Research project that online sales in China could reach nearly $160 billion by 2015.  By comparison, e-commerce sales totaled less than $50 billion last year.

That’s a lot of shoppers and a lot of potential revenue, to say the least.

As always, leave us your thoughts and comments!

Read Full Post »

eBay, With an Eye on Local and Mobile Expansion, Buys Where

Posted in Ecommerce, Mobile Commerce, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , , on April 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The steady stream of e-commerce acquisitions keeps rolling along as eBay has announced a plan to buy Where, which provides advertising services, mobile apps and search capabilities that enhance local shopping.

Full terms of the deal were not disclosed by either party.  It’s expected to close officially by the end of the second quarter of the year.

“By delivering personalized, hyper-local advertising, offers and deals to shoppers on their mobile phones, we see a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to reach more buyers, and for consumers to get more choice and value when they shop,” eBay said about the deal.

Where’s popular mobile application enables shoppers to search for products or services from local merchants and provides recommendations to consumers based on their shopping history and preferences.  It also serves up advertisements to individuals from local retailers as well.

The company boasts about 4 million registered users and partnerships with more than 120,000 retailers.  Where claims to handle more than 2 billion ad impressions each month, which reach a network of 50 million mobile users.  The Where app is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Palm WebOS phones.

The first priority once the deal is finalized?  Making PayPal available through Where’s mobile application.

“As a first step, we plan to integrate PayPal into the Where mobile app to make it even easier for PayPal customers to take advantage of the local deals,” said Amanda Pires, senior director of global communications, brand and experimental marketing at PayPal,in an eBay blog post.

Bringing Where on board continues a string of pickups by eBay aimed at broadening its mobile offerings, a reflection  of the growing demand for fun and useful m-commerce resources. Last year eBay bought local retail search engine Milo  and Red Laser, which develops mobile bar code scanning application for comparison shopping in brick and mortar stores.

All of eBay’s moves in the past 12-18 month also seem to point towards the company trying to compete directly with the likes of Groupon, Living Social and even Facebook for a larger slice of local shopping and advertising revenues.

Leave us your thoughts and comments!

Read Full Post »

New Report Reveals Serious Flaws in Electronic Payment Systems

Posted in Ecommerce, General News / Technology, Merchant Tips, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , , on April 15, 2011 | 2 Comments »

A new study out this week by researchers at Indiana University casts some serious doubts over the security protocols  used by many leading online payment systems and e-commerce sites, raising concerns that the industry could be facing a dangerous fraud threat in the very near future as a result.

The report, “How to Shop for Free Online: Security Analysis of Cashier-as-a-Service Based Web Stores,” was authored by Indiana University doctoral student Rui Wang, with help from associate professor XiaoFeng Wang and representatives from Microsoft as well.  It specifically cites quite a few reputable online shopping sites and payment services—Google Checkout, Amazon, PayPal, Buy.com, just to name a few—as having serious security flaws that could easily be exploited for fraudulent purposes.

Research focused wholly on the CAAS (‘cashier-as-a-service’) payment systems that are widely employed online and the team discovered that the gaping security flaws at play are largely the result of integration problems between payment systems and e-commerce platforms.

These integration issues have created an environment where criminals can trick the systems in a number of ways—from confirming payments to fraudulent or illegitimate sites, to actually changing the amounts paid for online purchases or receiving orders at no cost at all.

“Our analysis revealed the logic complexity in CaaS-based checkout mechanisms, and the effort required to verify their security properly when developing and testing these systems,” Rui Wang said.  “We believe this study takes the first step in the new security problem space that hybrid web applications bring.”

The team concludes that the study’s findings could be just the beginning of what may grow into a much broader problem with online payment systems.  And since the group really only studied what it calls the simplest of “trilateral interactions” between parties, they also conclude that more research is necessary to delve into some of the more complex payment tools available out there.

One thing the team does know?  Better cooperation between payment providers and e-commerce companies is necessary to reverse course:

“Payment service providers have a responsibility to make it clear how to safely use the service they provide, and merchants need to do their due diligence to operate these services properly,” Wang said.

Leave us your thoughts and comments and have a wonderful weekend!

Read Full Post »

AmEx Jumps into the Payment Processing Game

Posted in Ecommerce, General News / Technology, tagged , , , , , , on March 29, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Watch out, PayPal!  Ebay’s popular online payment processing system is about to get a fierce competitor with a big name behind it—American Express.

AmEx announced today the launch of its own digital payment platform called Serve, which will enable consumers to make payments online and transfer funds to other individuals as well.  Retailers in the U.S. that already accept American Express will be able to accept Serve payments right away.

“Serve is a new type of payment platform that isn’t tied to a single card or mobile operating system,” said Dan Schulman, AmEx’s group president of enterprise growth. “From day one it brings tremendous assets to the alternative payments space and gives consumers an option to shop online and offline at merchants who accept American Express.”

AmEx crafted Serve mainly to attract those consumers who usually eschew credit cards for cash and/or debit cards instead when making purchases or remitting payments.

It will work similarly to PayPal in that a user will be able to add funds to his or her Serve account from their checking or savings accounts, debit cards and credit cards for use on purchases from any retailer that currently accepts American Express. Enrollees can also get an AmEx-issued payment card for purchases in brick and mortar stars and cash withdrawals as well.

Also like PayPal, users will have the option to transfer money to other Serve users as well.

All accounts will be accessible online at Serve.com but also through both Apple and Android mobile phone applications and Facebook as well, meaning AmEx could have quite a reach with the new service almost immediately. What’s more, an individual Serve account will be able to support multiple sub-accounts so, for example, parents can maintain and control a Serve account for their kids.

Fees for the new service seem fairly reasonable.  Merchants will have to pay an undisclosed transaction fee to participate but American Express says the fee will still be less than what it charges for a credit card transaction.  Users will pay 2.9 percent plus $0.30 every time they add money to their account but are entitled to one free ATM withdrawal per month as well.  And while Serve will initially only be available in the U.S., AmEx does have plans to expand internationally sometime next year.

As always, leave us your thoughts and comments!

Read Full Post »

Report Finds Disconnect Between Alternative Payment Preferences and Offerings

Posted in Ecommerce, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , , on October 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Over the past few years, alternative payment methods for online purchases have gradually been gaining in popularity with many shoppers.  The success of PayPal has led to a proliferation of spin-offs offering similar services to consumers, many of which provide a bit more security and peace of mind than credit and debit cards.

However, a new study from Javelin Research finds that while these alternative methods are indeed being used by more and more people, merchants and retailers across the e-commerce industry have been slow to keep up with the demand.

Javelin’s report says that 54 percent of consumers have used an alternative payment method before, whether it be PayPal, Bill Me Later, or the checkout tools from Amazon and Google. However, only 35 percent of the 60 or so merchants that were polled by Javelin and Shop.org for the survey indicated that they offer such payment options.

Polling of the merchants took place in July and August of this year while Javelin used surveys of more than 3,200 consumers from last November to compile the data.

“Merchants are not meeting consumer demand for alternative payment options and may, at the same time, be tangentially keeping their transaction processing costs at a higher level than necessary,” says the report, which was written by Javelin’s director of payments research Beth Robertson, and Aleia Van Dyke, a research associate.

The report also says that 38 percent of the retailers polled claim average order values for shoppers using alternative methods tend to be higher than for consumers who choose to use major credit or debit cards, and that roughly 66 percent of merchants say that they pay less to process transactions using alternative methods.  Overall, though, only 6 percent of all online purchases are made with alternatives to credit and debit cards.

PayPal continues to be the leader among alternative payment options, offered by 95 percent of the merchants that host such methods.  Bill Me Later and Google Checkout are tied in second with roughly 33 percent each, with Checkout by Amazon a distant third.

“PayPal continues to challenge other providers by forcefully building out its product to add merchant and consumer value and augment its market reach,” says the report. “However, given the relatively nascent alternative payments landscape, other payment providers have ample opportunity to capture market share.”

That’s it for this week, leave us your thoughts and comments and have a great weekend!

Read Full Post »

Visa Throwing Its Hat into the Comparison Shopping Ring

Posted in Ecommerce, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , , , on March 12, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Visa Throwing Its Hat into the Comparison Shopping RingThough a full public release is probably a few months away, it appears that Visa is getting involved in the comparison shopping industry with a new initiative called Rightcliq, which is currently enrolling some early trial members.

Details are hazy at best right now but based on the Rightcliq terms of service, consumers will be able to use it to store credit card information and shipping addresses for online purchases with various web retailers.  Rightcliq apparently will also let shoppers collect special offers from certain merchants as well and save product information directly from shopping portals.

Prior to this week, the last time we heard much of anything publicly on this new application was back in October.

“[Rightcliq] is an online shopping tool targeted to consumers that assists online shoppers by offering the ability to browse multiple merchants and select items consumers are interested in looking at in one central location, making comparison shopping easier,” Joseph Saunders, Visa’s chairman and CEO, said at the time during a conference call.

Saunders added that Rightcliq would also include an “auto-sell” feature that instantly compiles a shopper’s shipping and payment data for faster checkout and exclusive offers for Visa cardholders.

This kind of payment processing-comparison shopping tool would likely put Rightcliq in direct competition with PayPal, which currently boasts more than 81 million active accounts.  While credit and debit cards are still the most frequently-used forms of payment for online purchases, PayPal is far and away the most popular alternate payment form.  With Google’s and Amazon’s checkout features failing to grab a significant market share or put a dent in PayPal’s slice of the pie, clearly Visa sees an opportunity here and is taking advantage.

Still, analysts believe the company faces an uphill battle in trying to compete, particularly in making Rightcliq as efficient as the well-established PayPal.  Anyone competing with Paypal would need to, at the very least, deliver a service with a large customer base that is cost-effective for retailers to employ, particularly smaller and medium-sized companies.

For now, Rightcliq is in what amounts to a testing phase, gathering user feedback to make tweaks and adjustments in the coming months.  There could, however, be a more formal public announcement on the plan as soon as tomorrow when Visa executives gather in San Francisco for an Investor Day to discuss new products and the company’s financial health.

We’ll keep tracking this story as new developments arise.

Read Full Post »

Credit Cards Cornering the Market for Online Purchases? Think Again!

Posted in Ecommerce, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

We’ve been tracking a lot of surveys, reports and studies on online shopping trends lately that have been full of data on traffic numbers and money spent.  Today, however, we came across some research that caught our eye if for no other reason than it surprised us a bit.

Research from Javelin Strategy & Research indicates that more and more online shoppers are now eschewing credit cards and using prepaid gift and debit cards as well as alternate payment methods like PayPal and Google’s Checkout service to complete their online purchases instead.

Javelin estimates that consumers spent roughly $205 billion in online purchases last year.  Credit cards were still the top payment option at 43.5 percent of the total online payment volume, with debit cards at 28 percent, PayPal/Google Checkout-type tools at nearly 16 percent and prepaid/gift cards accounting for almost 7 percent of online payment volume.   Javelin proposes, however, that the latter two methods of payment will only increase in the near future while it expects credit and debit card usage to decrease.

“Prepaid and gift cards are hitting stride in the online payments environment,” says Javelin analyst Elizabeth Robertson.

Why is this, you ask?  According to the company, the increase in popularity of non-credit card payments can largely be attributed to consumer sentiment and concern at a time of continued economic trouble.  Quite simply, shoppers are choosing to pay for their purchases right away rather than deferring them and taking on more debt with credit cards.

Javelin’s research included some 5 year estimates to support its overall claim that these alternate payment methods will only continue to cut into credit and debit card usage.   Its’ 2014 forecasts for the percentage of total online payment volume of the major payment options in play:

-Credit cards: 39.4% (decreasing)
-Debit Cards: 25.6% (decreasing)
-Prepaid/gift Cards: 10.7% (increasing)
-PayPal/Google Checkout, etc: 19.2% (increasing)

That’s nearly a 4 percent change up and down across the board, with store-issued credit cards compiling the final 5 percent.   Overall Javelin anticipates an overall increase in the number of U.S. adults regularly shopping online (63 percent to 78 percent expected in 2014) as well.

We’ve always advocated using credit cards as your primary purchase tool online, mostly because they offer the most protection against fraud and give a shopper the most flexibility with bigger purchases.  But this information and Javelin’s projected figures regarding online payment systems is certainly intriguing.  We cannot argue with the logic behind using things other than credit cards to avoid adding on too much debt, but we want to hear from you.  Do you agree with Javelin’s predictions?  Are you already one of the many online shoppers keeping your credit cards tucked away for PayPal or a gift card?

Leave us a comment!

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: