Mobile Commerce Trends

Which this technology, buying, selling and transfer of financial information can be done using mobile.Mobile commerce holds a great advantage over conventional means of commerce due to the reason that people are glued to mobile devices. Mobile provides the single platform to users for data storage, connectivity, monitoring stock exchange etc through various applications available to them.

From a communication device to funds exchange tool, mobile has truly evolved in past few years. Some technology trends involved in mobile commerce are:

• SMS based: Text messages are exchanged between customer and the exchange authority for transferring funds. After user is finished with purchasing, he sends a payment request message. Generally, this type of payment method is used in digital goods. User receives a pin from the merchant after a successful payment has been booked. User later uses that pin to access the content.
• Direct mobile billing: This type of payment is used like in paid gaming site for mobile where user chooses the option of payment with a mobile bill. It’s a fast, easy and safe mode of payment.
• Mobile Wallet: It’s a service which allows the users to store virtually everything, a user would store in a physical wallet. A mobile wallet holds credit cards, debit cards, coupons, loyalty cards etc in it in form of information, which is required to perform the transactions. Google’s mobile wallet works on NFC chip, which is a secure element that differentiates this service from becoming an app.
• Mobile Banking: With evolving technology, banking was transformed into an online activity. Users got the advantage of performing financial transaction while sitting at home, using digital media. But as mobile technology advanced, this trend was introduced on mobile devices. Users could now transact not only while sitting at home or office, but could also while traveling, driving or sitting at coffee shop.
• Mobile shopping: Smart-phones are acting as the helping hand in generating revenue for companies by allowing the users to shop from mobile devices using mobile app of online shopping stores. Many retail stores are coming up with their own apps for smart-phones so users could directly connect to their store and shop. It provides a convenient mode of shopping to users, with the home delivery add-on provided by the online stores.
• Mobile Coupons: Mobile coupons are the coupon codes provided by the seller through text messages to users, in order to attract the traffic for shopping. Users get the coupon codes which they could redeem by shopping with merchant, either with e-commerce web-site or app or in-person shopping.
• Carrier Billing: It could be related with Direct mobile billing, where user is given the freedom to pay for the usage of an app or any other service with his mobile bill. The usage charges are included in the mobile bills of the customer rather than asking the customer to pay using credit/debit cards or using any third-party mobile payment service. iCloud could be mentioned as an example of a cloud computing service involved in m-commerce or m-pay. Users are charged on the monthly basis in their mobile bills.

Mobile commerce is not only a convenient method for making transactions but equally secure as e-commerce. Standards for security are followed in mobile app development process so as to ensure the absolute privacy of user’s delicate information.