Mobile payments in Spain: The "war" will continue under the promise of low margins in the area of payments acceptance

A few weeks ago, the reputable payments magazine THE PAYPERS  asked me to briefly express my opinion about this trending topic. My experience and work under WayVent has allowed me to gain additional insights about the "mobile payments war" in Spain, and therefore I have "pasted" the full article below. As usual, it is hard to synthesize all my thoughts and opinions in one post, but for sure the debate is open and can lead to a bigger debate which I am always keen to start...


The biggest honeycomb is in all the data, identity, and fraud related services...

With a 110% mobile penetration and nearly 60% of smartphone users, Spain has all the numbers to make mobile payments a reality very soon. A recent study from Forrester Research showed that despite the high mobile penetration in the country, only 13% of users use their mobiles to make purchases, although the number is growing and some big retailers already have a bigger share. Additionally, other reports highlight that 23% of SMEs are planning to implement mobile payments in the coming months.

Furthermore, we also see the big push of NFC technology in the country, and since its pioneer trial in Sitges back in 2010, the total rollout of contactless POS is currently over 300,000, where Comercia Global Payments (Caixa) owns more than a third of these. Other players such as Orange Cash, Vodafone Wallet, and Caixa Wallet in partnership with the top three Spanish telcos have also entered this market.

One particular thing made telcos more active in payments than most banks in the past few years is GSMA’s push and lobbying efforts. In fact, I am sure we will hear once more in the following dedicated events that the year of mobile payments is coming; however, many things must change for this scenario to become a reality. Telcos are losing ARPU (Average revenue per user) in messaging services and potentially some of their user base over the traditional voice services due the proliferation and consolidation of OTT services such as WhatsApp. Therefore, it will be interesting to see what telcos will bring to the table to overcome the compelling HCE technology with its secure element in the cloud. This technology and the newly launched hybrid NFC approach from Apple Pay seem to have threatened the dominance of the SIM-based NFC model. Interestingly, Visa and MasterCard have leveraged on this new cloud initiative and have backed it up with the next revolution in the payments and risk industry: the Token Service, infuriating perhaps many telcos which will have to push even harder for a piece of the payments pie from a different angle.

Risk Management views at Authentication level. Time for the banks to move on?...

Last February I had the honour to speak at the Merchant Payments Ecosystem Conference held in Berlin, where I briefly shared my views about a key topic that is emerging again in payments and risk management, which is Authentication and Identity Management.

With the rise of mobile commerce, new initiatives are emerging to close the gap between the always complex process of authenticating and validating customer regristation or login in a CNP environment (cardholder non-present). It seems that Biometrics is finally taking off after many years of speculation about its real potential, and some vendors are taking advantage of this momentum. Some of them are simply launching optical and facial recognition KYC processes with a great UX flow that enable merchants to capture customer personal details and documents with a quick "hold and scan in front of the cam" way. However, we must differentiate between valid biometric data and old fashion OCR technology.

From Payments & Fraud to Big Data & Conversions

It has been a while since I last wrote a post and before I start this new one I want to thank 3 top friends for making me go back to blogging :)

Laura Guillot: The one who made me start blogging a few years ago, and someone who teaches me something new almost every day.

Adriana Montejo: Founder of Fun Choices and without a doubt a great reference in many ways.

Gema Muñoz: A leader in the analytics field and a real source of energy with whom I am learning new ways to work with Data.

Well, this time I will do my best to at least write on a monthly basis, with the same style and content I have been using so far.

Back to the post.. I will simply share today some of the thoughts about the conference I gave last

Paymification as a key marketing and monetization tool

It,s been a while since I last wrote in my blog.. but it has been a very hectic year full of payments!!

Saying that, and following on a recent "whitepaper" I wrote a "whitepaper" for the World Regulatory Briefing (WRB) which I did attend last October, I would like to share its content here and hopefully use this post as a welcome back to blogging :)

Here it comes...

Paymification as a key marketing and monetization tool

We all live in a transactional era, where most of us belong to an almost impulsive consuming society, full of different marketplaces and or excuses to transact. This need to buy or transact can range from p2p to c2b, c2many (crowdfunding), or even for a quick gaming/gambling experience. On top of that, we must add that the form of currency to pay for all these can vary from one or many of the following:

Old fashion banknotes/coins, Electronic transactions, E/M-wallets, Virtual/social currencies and or Bartering or any other form of exchange.

El futuro de la multipantalla digital y de cristal...

A día de hoy casi apenas tengo tiempo para escribir todo lo que quiero, pero aquellos que siguen mi blog con regularidad, se habrán dado cuenta de que una de mis "obsesiones o monotema" es todo lo referente a la convergencia digital y todo el universo commerce que hay detrás de toda esta convergencia cada vez más imparable.

Por eso, en el post de hoy voy simplemente a comentar brevemente un video que hace unos meses compartió Corning; una de las empresas líderes y especialistas en fabricación y usos de cerámica y cristal. 

En este video vemos un claro ejemplo de cómo toda la tecnología y servicios digitales que usamos a diario (redes sociales, VOIP, emails, geo-localización y gps, ecommerce, m-commerce, etc) se "funden o casan" con el mundo offline más cercano y cotidiano de nuestras vidas. Vamos, que todo lo que a día de hoy hacemos con un smartphone, iPad, pc, etc; pasa a fusionarse e integrarse en los cristales, encimeras, marquesinas y un largo etcétera de materiales y estructuras que no solo tenemos en casa sino que haya donde vayamos nos encontramos.

Tras esta breve introducción, os dejo con el citado video:

Burbujas y tendencias en los medios de pago...

Hace ya tiempo que no toco el tema que probablemente más me apasiona dentro del inmenso mundo del ecommerce, y que no es otro que el de los medios de pago y su vital importancia en el desarrollo de este gigantesco mercado mundial cada vez más viral/social...

Pues bien, tras varios borradores que dan seguro para un libro entero, voy a tratar de resumir lo más brevemente que pueda :)) todo lo que está pasando en el mundillo de los medio de pago "móviles", así como de dar unas pinceladas sobre lo que estoy seguro acontecerá en un futuro no muy lejano...

Antes que nada , me gustaría hacer referencia a los diferentes posts que llevo escritos hasta ahora sobre este apasionante tema, ya que puede ser útil  para situarse un poco en el contexto al que voy a referirme.