Phone wars

There is fighting on the mobile OS front, there is fighting on apps & services front and there is fighting on the m-commerce front – it’s the Phone Wars!

So Paypal has acquired BillMeLater, an interesting move and although it may not seem groundbreaking it does seem to chip away at the banks standard business model. Look at it like this; if Paypal is online payment made easy and BillMeLater is buy online now and pay later then the growth of the combined business must further encourage online sales and take more transactions away from traditional banks.

Another case of putting two things together and getting more than the sum of the parts?

It reminds me of another Paypal related blog – I posted back in April ‘08, Paypal + iPhone = m-commerce

In that instance, two capabilities coming together to drive the use of mobiles in the purchase process.

Here is the announcement.

Paypal + iPhone = m-commerce

I’ve taken my Paypal account for granted; it’s been there for me whenever I bought stuff on eBay and from time to time it’s been useful for other online transactions – actually it is a mainstay of `account to account payments’ in the online world, but I’ve never given it a lot of thought in terms of online strategy. But suddenly….

Well a couple of weeks ago I became an eBay seller – spring cleaning the shed and selling a few of the bikes and golf clubs I’ve accumulated – and discovered how flexible and straightforward Paypal is when you’re on the receiving end of online payments. So it gave me a better view of it’s role online and it set me thinking yet again about whether we will ever see m-commerce take off.

Well, if you stay on this thought-train it does seem possible… Just think what happens when the iPhone generation starts to browse and buy on the move.

eBay mobile + Paypal + iPhone = simple m-commerce!

Taking a quick look around for more info about Paypal and it’s role in the online strategy of financial services and retail companies I found this interesting piece which gives loads of useful background on Paypal, their positioning and also their Mobile strategy. So maybe this is another reason to carry some hope for m-commerce???