Search Results for: mobile

WorldRemit joins mobile money provider Paga to allow direct pay to 11 million Nigerian accounts

Editor

International cash transfer company WorldRemit signed an agreement with mobile money provider Paga to allow direct payments to 11 million additional accounts in Nigeria. In a statement the global remittance company said the move “considerably grows” its footprint in the country, which opened new channels to its users in more than 50 countries transferring money to citizens in Nigeria. According to figures cited by WorldRemit, Paga is the country’s widest-reaching mobile money company with more than 14,000 agents present across 36 states. Approximately $26 billion was transferred into Nigeria during…

Mobile App ‘State of Mobile 2019 Report’

Voice App

Global app store consumer spend reached $101 billion in 2018, up 75 percent from 2016. This figure is expected to exceed $120 billion in 2019, according to mobile data and analytics provider App Annie. The company released its annual The State of Mobile in 2019 Report — a comprehensive guide for businesses looking at mobile. Screenshot from App Annie 2019 Annual State of Mobile Report China accounted for nearly 40 percent of total consumer spend in 2018. Globally, on a category level, games accounted for 74 percent of consumer spend…

Distribution Is The Real Disruption, Mobile phones game-changing agri-tech in Africa

Editor
Farmers

While emerging technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence can capture our imagination, some of the most game-changing innovations for smallholder farmers are more modest. Seeds. Roads. Electricity. While such technologies may seem mundane, they are anything but. Reaching smallholder farmers in rural areas takes a nuanced combination of appropriate innovations, sophisticated distribution systems, and a human touch. One organization celebrated for its approach is One Acre Fund, a non-profit social enterprise working with 600,000 farmers in East Africa. I spoke with Ilana Kessler, Impact Ventures Growth Director, about scaling innovative approaches to help…

Mobile now accounts for 47% of all online transactions in Middle East and Africa, Criteo

Editor

The advertising platform Criteo released its 2018 Q2 Global Commerce Review, having analysed browsing and purchasing data from over 5,000 retailers in more than 80 countries. Michele Iozzo, managing director for the Middle East & Africa, Criteo, says, “Mobile continues to command a higher share of the online transactions pie driven by high smartphone penetration across the MEA region. The study has revealed a year-on-year increase of the share of In-App Transactions for retailers who promote their shopping app, proving that it isn’t enough to just launch an app, but…

Mobile Commerce enabler DOCOMO Partners with Safaricom to Launch first App Store Integration with M-PESA.

Dianne Jacobs
M-Gas Mpesa Central Bank of Kenya

Global mobile commerce enabler, DOCOMO Digital has partnered with Safaricom to give customers the option to pay for content on the Google Play Store using M-PESA. The integration, which is powered by DOCOMO Digital’s mobile commerce enabling platform using Google Play’s payment API, allows M-PESA customers to use the mobile money service to pay for goods and services from the app store. The service is available to more than 27 million M-PESA customers in Kenya with an Android smartphone or tablet. From today, customers matching this criteria can purchase content…

Mobile phone and broadband services need ‘radical improvement’

MTN Rwanda

The head of the UK National Infrastructure Commission has called for urgent action to tackle poor mobile phone coverage. Lord Adonis has written to the telecoms regulator Ofcom urging it to take action to deal with the issue. It follows a report that one million homes have poor broadband and large parts of the UK have no 4G coverage. On Friday Ofcom said calls and text messages could not be sent on all four mobile phone networks in 30% of the entire UK landmass. It is not the first time…

Target Launches its own Mobile Payments System with Debut of Wallet

Dianne Jacobs

As promised earlier, Target launched its own mobile payments system with the introduction of “Wallet” in the Target app. Wallet, as the name implies, allows Target shoppers in-store to both check out using their smartphone as well as take advantage of their Cartwheel digital coupons and discounts with only one scan of their barcode. Already, Cartwheel savings in Target’s app had worked like this – that is, after adding the discounts on selected products to your Target account using the Cartwheel feature, shoppers could present a barcode to be scanned…

Parking Insider is a mobile wallet dedicated to helping you avoid parking tickets

Parking Insider is a smart app with a mobile wallet expressly dedicated to enabling its users to quickly and seamlessly pay for parking spots by the minute. The app also invites users to earn free minutes of parking by snapping pictures of free parking spaces, photos that it will use to create a heat map that enables others users to find open parking spots. It’s the second go at this idea by two of Parking Insider’s three creators. Shruti Kuber  and Advait Kumar are both getting their master’s degrees in…

Australian Banks avoid Apple Pay, announce their own Beem mobile wallet

Dianne Jacobs

Three of Australia’s largest banks have continued to ignore Apple Pay and announced a new joint venture named Beem that is charged with developing a mobile wallet for iOS and Android users. Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), and the National Australia Bank (NAB) claim that customers will be able to use the app regardless of which bank they use, including organisations outside of the trio, with the end goal to be creating an “industry-wide payment solution”. Westpac chief executive of Consumer Bank George Frazis claimed the app followed…

Google secretly recording users through mobile devices

Dianne Jacobs

Did you know that Google has been recording you without your knowledge? Some of your most intimate conversations might be sitting in a Google data centre somewhere. Just talking is enough to activate the recordings – but thankfully there’s an easy way of hearing and deleting them. The technology giant has effectively turned millions of its users’ smartphones into listening devices that can capture intimate conversations — even when they aren’t in the room. The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products. The feature…