Inside Baseball for Payment and Data Geeks
Visa’s release a new iPhone app last month. One Bank has signed up (US Bank) the rest are holding back (more on this below). The application has been a 2 year effort driven by Monitise, and the UI looks very good. However, I’m afraid that Visa’s latest mobile effort is doomed to failure because of the "last mile" issue at the POS.
We may be seeing the beginning of a seismic change in advertising spend, and the way consumers are tracked and targeted. The “addressable market” for mobile advertising should not be viewed as a subset of online spend, both because of POS opportunities and the media richness (and now multi-tasking) of the iPhone. Apple’s strategy is brilliant, I would imagine them taking a regulatory position that all ad networks are welcome to work through their standard…. Apple is protecting customers’ privacy.
It seems as if AT&T has pulled together Verizon and Sprint to form a new venture to focus on pre-paid.
For FSIs today the top issues in delivering new value propositions are: where is the short term revenue, what can be created that leverages current assets, what provides “true” customer value, how do I stop non-banks from creating value in my ecosystem and who internally can execute?