The story of how mBlox envisions mobile payments is best told through the app for Premier League soccer star Rio Ferdinand. The center back for the Manchester United is at the tail end of his career but his earning power has perhaps never been higher.

This is the second installation in ReadWriteWeb's series on mobile payments. See the first segment, How Mobile Payments Will Evolve In The Next Several Years.

The "#5" (Ferdinand's number) app was built in four weeks for Android and released in May. The iOS app was released in October and its grand unveiling was several weeks ago during a Fox Sports broadcast of a Premier League game in the U.S. Ferdinand's expects that nearly $120 million will be made for Ferdinand's brand partners, either through the specific app or other digital endeavors.

The app is like any other celebrity vanity app. It is aimed towards the fans to give them an inside look into the player's day-to-day life. There are videos of Ferdinand and other soccer stars playing video games and walking around town. It has social engagement layers and the ability for geo-fencing so mBlox knows who has the app is attending an United game.

"The application is a 'focus intelligent content offering' - what it means is that it creates a brand2one relation. It is relevant and creates the brand engagement. In this case it is 'Rio's fans' and Rio. The application is satisfying the 'community interest,'" a mBlox spokesperson said.

While the #5 app has some interesting functionality (such as some offline data caching to watch videos without data connectivity), the app itself is nothing groundbreaking. It does everything from a front and back end perspective that users and administrators would expect. It has a location layer mixed with social engagement and provides analytics that can be acted upon.

A System For Mobie Payments

"We aim to build payments into mobile instead of building mobile into payments," said mBlox CEO Andrew Dark in a recent interview.

The Ferdinand app can accept payments in a variety of ways - direct to carrier billing, charge to credit/debit card, PayPal and other payment systems. The way Dark sees it, the user should not have to be forced into any proprietary format. Basically, the threshold for making a payment should be extremely low.

The payments industry calls this "pain points," the spot in the transaction process where the user has to perform and action often coinciding outside the normally expected realm of behavior. The brands that support Ferdinand's app want it to be as easy as possible for people to pay.

Users are used to being funneled into one type of proprietary system or another. Whether it be Apple's iTunes payment store, Google Checkout, Amazon's One-Click billing, direct carrier billing or PayPal. The idea for mBlox is to set up a mobile wallet where various types of payments will accepted without having to think about it. Its PayMobile program is much like Amazon's billing service but allows users to pay with either direct carrier billing or a pay-as-you-go credit card without entering personally identifiable information into the process. Those avenues are specifically designed to eliminate pain points, especially targeted towards younger consumers that tend to be the ones making smaller payments through apps.

Outside of the Ferdinand app, mBlox is working on building intelligent capabilities into mobile wallets and make the process secure across different types of goods. Whether that is paying for a train ticket or parking with a smartphone or purchasing digital goods through an app.

"We believe there is a false crusade for one-size-fits-all in mobile payments," Dark said.

In the United Kingdom, this is where mobile payments will be going, steering users away from pain points to make the barrier for payments lower. Oddly, it took a soccer player to show the way.

The unlikely duo discussed how the Web has transformed the industry. Value is shifting constantly, and new opportunities are popping up everywhere. Partridge and Shulman showed repeatedly that sometimes, payment companies are better off partnering rather than competing to create the most value. It was fitting that these two leaders from competing payment processors had such an agreeable conversation.

Blurring The Digital Line

Partridge said that 16% of Visa's payments are processed online, and Schulman said American Express was at 8-10%. But both agreed that the digital and physical distinction is actually becoming less important over time. "Distinction between online and offline is blurring," Schulman said. The same information overlay is in front of us now whether we're in the physical store or not. The only difference is whether we can reach out and touch the product after we look at the details on our devices.

Partridge agreed. "There's a convergence," he said. "That convergence is going to continue to happen."

Primary Brands & Partner Brands

Battelle asked these representatives of the old guard credit card companies whether insurgents like Square and PayPal were stealing the spotlight from them. In the pre-Web era, the Visa and American Express brands themselves were associated directly with payments, but online, they're increasingly in the background while these newcomers get all the credit.

Partridge didn't seem to mind. He noted that 46% of online transactions are made with a Visa product, including PayPal, Visa's largest online merchant. Visa and PayPal compete in some ways, but they cooperate in others. That's just part of doing business in the digital economy. It didn't sound like Partridge was too upset about Visa sharing the spotlight with partners.

Schulman seemed more keen to compete. He felt that traditional associations with the American Express brand translate well to the Web, connoting trust, security and responsive customer service. He said that was an asset to Serve, the new American Express direct payment platform, which has begun to move into mobile and compete with a variety of new payment processors.

Redefining The Commerce Lifestyle

"The commerce lifestyle is being redefined," Schulman said. Partridge agreed, adding that this results in the leading companies sometimes offering similar solutions. "It's going to come down to who can execute," he said.

Schulman noted that it's hard for the established companies to adjust to disruption, but it's worth the effort. He said that digital offerings make it possible to serve younger customers who don't want credit or have thin credit. The Web creates opportunities that traditional products haven't been able to penetrate.

Data: The Holy Grail

Battelle noted that payment processors hold some of the most valuable user data out there. It's a massive asset, but it's also highly regulated. "Data is the holy grail of digital commerce," Schulman said, which explains the barrage of daily deals and other ploys to get consumers to share their consumer preferences - and thus their data - on the Web. But those services aren't precise enough. "Data and information has to be opt in," Schulman said. "It has to be held private."

Payment data is not just for tracking consumers. It has broader economic value. It helps detect fraud, it helps merchants plan stores and target products, and it also helps personalize experiences for consumers.

The major payment providers are not just services. They're platforms for the huge amount of data they produce. Both Schulman and Partridge were enthusiastic about opening APIs to developers beginning this year.

Schulman and Partridge want their trusted payment networks to support smart, precise applications of data to create broad value. Paraphrasing Schulman, we'll look back five years from now and laugh about the email barrages in online commerce. That was just the beginning.

Check out the Web 2.0 schedule and watch the events live here.

Google Wallet is rolling out in a limited fashion, but there aren't enough NFC-capable phones out there to really call this a "launch." And that's just the hardware part; customer behavior will have to adjust, too. Industry insiders say the era of NFC payments is still a year or two away.

Google Loves Its Betas

GigaOM has spotted a Google Wallet-branded NFC reader in the wild, but despite having readers at San Francisco coffee houses and releasing funny George Costanza videos, Google Wallet is not ready for primetime.

Google Wallet will surely be convenient, but the current generation of Android phones is not equipped to handle it. The Nexus S 4G is the only officially compatible phone on the market. Google's announcements so far have been about partnerships, preparing the industry for Wallet, but the consumer side is just not there.

Google has offered some incentives to use Wallet with the initial partners, but it uses a "virtual" system to include people without capable phones. In short, it doesn't count as NFC. For the real deal, there's only one phone (Nexus S 4G), one operator (Sprint), one bank (Citi) and one payment network (MasterCard). This is a trial phase. The NFC World Congress starts today, and Google isn't even making an official appearance. It's Google, remember? Everything's always in beta. Today's Wallet announcements are just an expansion of the test.

The Competition

Google has to come out of the gate strong on mobile payments because it faces stiff competition. PayPal, the pioneer of online payments, seems downright calm about Google Wallet. "Put simply, before you try mobile (or any other payments) solution, you need to be great at payments," PayPal spokesperson Anuj Nayar told us in May.

Visa's digital wallet is coming, and it has also made a large investment in Square, which provides a mobile payment solution that doesn't require an NFC-capable smartphone. Square's Register and Card Case also offer an alternative to NFC for merchants.

Square has also been playing nice with Apple, Google's real competition for the actual point of sale: the smartphone. There have been conflicting reports, but the latest rumblings indicate that the imminent iPhone 5 will have an NFC chip. In the keynote address at WWDC this June, Apple revealed that it has over 200 million iTunes accounts with credit cards, making it "very likely" that Apple has "the most accounts with cards anywhere on the Internet." An NFC-enabled iPhone would make it possible for any equipped merchant to charge those accounts.

The mobile payments field is green, the lines are drawn, and the lights are on, but the teams are still warming up.

Google's Commerce Convergence

Google is working on a bunch of commerce plays right now, and they haven't been integrated yet. In addition to Wallet, Google is still developing Offers, its local daily deals product. While Google announced Wallet and Offers on the same day, they're both far from finished. Offers is only available in a handful of cities.

In fact, the pattern of simultaneous announcements about Wallet and Offers continues; just as Wallet's "launch" was revealed for today, the German coupon site DailyDeal has announced its acquisition by Google. Google also recently acquired The Dealmap, a map-based aggregator for daily deals. It seems determined to make a stand against Groupon, who rejected Google's $6 billion acquisition offer last year.

Google has to make lots of noise in commerce, but the game won't be changed for some time. Before we see more smartphone penetration, more compatible hardware and - most importantly - broad changes in consumer and merchant behavior, this is all just a warm-up.

How would you like mobile payments to work? Let's discuss in the comments.

According to Verizon, its customers will be able to sign up for Serve accounts on both Verizon phones and tablets, although it did not specify which devices those would be.

Serve, which can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account, does not require users to be American Express card holders. Instead, it's aimed at those who don't rely on credit cards. With Serve, customers can shop both online and offline, anywhere American Express is accepted.

Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use Serve to buys goods and services on their mobile device in just a few clicks. The process is easier than entering in a credit card number by hand, because all that's required to checkout using Serve is your mobile phone number.

American Express and Verizon will also team up to use Serve as a way to source, distribute and enable the redemption of online and mobile offers with participating Serve merchants. The offers and coupons customers redeem at checkout will automatically appear in their Serve accounts, which can be viewed and managed online and on mobile.

In addition, both companies are working with Payfone, a mobile payments startup which American Express invested in this spring.  Payfone helps to combine mobile authorization and payment services with the Serve platform. This allows customers to pay for both digital and physical goods using just their phone number. Payfone is unique as it leverages the security built into mobile operator networks to fight fraud. With Payfone, the customer's SIM card, device ID and location are tied to each customer's account for more secure transactions.

Merchants interested in learning more about accepting Serve can visit www.serve.com/billmyphone.

In addition, the financial tools now available in the Citi iPad app seem to take inspiration from similar online services, like Intuit's money management suite at Mint.com, for example. And, says the company, the iPad app's progress won't stop here. It will be under constant evolution, getting "smarter" over the coming weeks, and may even help users manage offers and rewards in the future.

When Citi approached the iPad, explains Tracey Weber, Citi's head of North American Internet and Mobile Banking, it did so thinking of it as not just another mobile offering. "We view the iPad as an opportunity to engage with customers in a much deeper way," says Weber.

People use tablets in differently than they do their mobile smartphones, she says. They often engage with them in the evenings, reading magazines, books, and newspapers, playing games, and watching videos. This engaged type of use is what gave the bank the opportunity to provide its own more deeply engaging experience via the iPad.

Analyzing Your Finances, How Very Mint-Like!

Instead of simply providing company info and access to banking transaction tools, the app delves deeper into your finances, with rich, interactive charts highlighting things like cash flow, balance trends, overall debt and more. There's even a section where you can compare your personal data to the aggregated, anonymous data of other Citi customers by a number of factors, including income level, household type, location and so on.

Being able to dive into your own finances like this, visualize trends, and make comparisons is one of the primary functions of the online financial management service Mint.com.  Of course, Mint can track more than just bank accounts, covering everything from investments to auto loans. But such deep data analysis is still a rarity among banking institutions, which is why it's so interesting to see what Citi is doing here. Even banking giant Bank of America only offers a fairly traditional iPad application, which just launched last month.

Future Offers/Rewards Platform?

Meanwhile, Citi comes out of the gate ahead, and is now planning to incorporate even more features, most of which it can't talk about too much. But Citi is a launch partner with Google on Google Wallet, the new mobile wallet service designed for Android handsets. And Weber says that the company sees a "huge opportunity" in the offers/rewards space, which incidentally is a feature of the new Google service.

While there's no direct announcement related to an forthcoming offers/rewards feature within Citi's mobile apps, iPad or otherwise, it only makes sense that the company would one day port the rewards programs it now operates online to these newer form factors. It could then take advantage of the unique opportunities that come from being on mobile: access to a user's real-time location, SMS text messaging, and more.

Banking just got a little less boring, we'd say. We're staying tuned.

Credit card fraud is a big problem, explains Jumio founder and CEO Daniel Mattes, "it's 200 hundred billion per year in the U.S. alone," he says. Yes, that's per year.

When conducting business online, the fraud risk is even greater because merchants are dealing with "card not present" transactions - meaning transactions where a physical card has not been swiped in a reader. When merchants process these fraudulent transactions, they end up dealing with chargebacks and lost revenue.

For consumers, the processes the merchants put in place to help prevent online purchase fraud are often a hassle -  creating a username and password on the site, filling out long forms filled with personal information, and entering in the CVV code from the back of the card. The frustration of this lenghty process can lead to lost sales. Jumio says that Netswipe can help here too. It conducted a focus group study which found that customers using its solution were more likely to complete their online transactions (79% with Netswipe vs. 48% without).

But Jumio doesn't want to just improve churn rates for merchants, it aims to disrupt the entire payments system by providing a seamless, one-stop solution for both merchants and developers alike.

The Technology

Using computer vision technology, the software analyzes five frames of the webcam's video stream to "see" the credit card. It does not take a picture or store the card information on your computer. The process of reading the card is brief - only 250 milleseconds. Jumio's technology then verifies and processes the transaction.

The computer vision technology is highly accurate, too. Only 1 out of 1 million transactions are misread, thanks to the advanced system used behind the scenes. Over the course of a year and a half, Jumio seeded its network with data samples in order to train it. Now, the entire system is fully automated. The company's staff uses a 24/7 monitoring tool to track potential fraud, but are not involved in the actual transactions. It's the software that knows if you're holding up a real credit card or a piece of paper.

On Mobile: An App for Merchants, A Library for Developers

But the solution Jumio designed is not intended only for online shopping. There's a two-part mobile platform, too, launching later this year.

Mobile App

The first part will be a cashier solution, similar to Square, the popular dongle that attaches to an iPhone or Android, allowing individuals and small business owners to accept swiped transactions. Like Square, there will also be a mobile application, just no dongle. Instead, customers will hold up their credit card in front of the phone's camera.

Developer Library

A second part to the mobile solution is a library that will allow developers the ability to integrate Netswipe technology into their mobile applications. This piece of Jumio's solution is the one that's most similar to Card.io, which offers SDKs for mobile developers.

The big difference between what Card.io provides and Netswipe is that Card.io still requires that developers use their own merchant accounts - it only does the computer vision portion. Essentially, it's an easier way to fill in the forms.

Although Card.io may add merchant partners in the future, it does not yet offer those today. Meanwhile, Jumio is providing the complete solution - not just the scanning interface, but the authorization, processing and fraud prevention. "The advantage for mobile developers," says Mattes, "is that mobile apps don't have be PCI-certified." (Payment Card Industry Security Standard, required for any business that processes credit card transactions.) Instead, developers simply add Jumio's library to their app in order to start taking payments. And it can work alongside other solutions, too.

As Cheap as Square

The cost of using Jumio's system is affordable - just 2.75% per swipe for small and micro transactions, the same as Square. Also like Square, there are no other hidden fees or monthly charges. However, for larger organizations, the rate may be higher.  Mattes says it will vary between merchant types and country.

Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin is Lead Investor

Jumio's core team, including its CEO, comes from the Internet telephony startup Jaja. It also has an impressive list of investors, including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who's a member of Jumio's board and who previously led a Series A funding round of $6.5 Million. The advisory board also includes Zain Khan, a former Google exec, Mark Britto, former Amazon executive, Thomas Jungreithmeir, managing director of TJP and Bjorn Evers, a former gaming industry CEO.

More info is available now on Jumio.com.

Until now, credit card accounts and personal information have been stored in centralized, online databases, making them vulnerable to attacks. With the new cloudKey system, which uses standard encryption technology and a "distributed key" topology, appMobi aims to deliver a more secure solution.

With cloudKey, customers' private data is stored using 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which is the NSA-approved data encryption standard. It also uses a "distributed key" topology, which means that the appMobi servers don't house the private data themselves, only decryption keys. These keys on their own are worthless - a hacker would still need to get hold of a user's device in order to obtain the credit card data.

Even then, doing so would be difficult. The data on the device is encrypted, too, and hackers would have to crack a password to get access to that information. Even if a hacker was able to break through all these barriers, the payoff would be minimal - perhaps just one credit card number. For most hackers, that would represent too much work for too little reward.

cloudKey Technology

The new cloudKey e-commerce system easily integrates with payment gateways from PayPal, Authorize.net and even direct carrier billing. It has been tested in all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, IE 6+ and Safari, and works both online or on mobile.

The system's technology does not require specialized hardware, either, which makes it different than point-of-sale focused payment systems that use NFC, for example. With NFC, devices have to come equipped with secure storage - a special on-device hardware storage area where credit card information and other private data is saved. Although appMobi's system is not competitive with NFC, as it's designed for online and mobile purchases, not physical ones taking place at a cash register, it is possible that parts of this system could be used to enable a secure storage area of sorts on NFC-equipped phones that lack the necessary hardware, like Nokia's C7 and N9. These new Nokia devices, it's been discovered, are not capable of supporting mobile payments or mobile wallets, for that very reason.

Where to Get It

The cloudKey technology will be immediately integrated into appMobi's 1Touch payment system, for use by mobile and Web developers. It will be free for 30 days, and afterwards, there will be a flat rate of 10 cents per transaction.

The widget will arrive later this summer, the company said.

It's no surprise then, that PayPal is joining in with its own implementation of NFC. As a top provider in the payments space, it had no choice but to participate in this emerging trend.

PayPal Does NFC on Android

The application itself looks great. In the demo (see the video here), a PayPal user can either send money or receive money using the widget. After one person initiates the request, both people just tap their phones together until they buzz. That means the data transfer is complete. However, for security purposes, users do have to complete the transaction with the entry of a PIN or password.

It's a lot like how the contact sharing mobile app Bump works, except that the underlying technology is different. Bump uses sensors on both iPhones and Android, while NFC requires the use of a special chip in the phone itself, something that's still somewhat a rarity on today's smartphones. Today's demo involved Samsung's Nexus S, but other NFC phones are on their way, including the upcoming BlackBerry Bold (9900/9930) devices, Nokia's Astound, variants of the Samsung Galaxy S II and others.

Recently, PayPal made another acquisition aimed at bolstering its mobile presence: Zong, a mobile payments company that specialized in carrier billing. Zong enabled end users to pay for digital items like virtual goods and in-app purchases, by having those items charged to their phone bill. NFC, however, is more often associated with paying for physical goods - like store-bought items from a local retailer. By attacking on both fronts - virtual and physical - it's clear that PayPal is aiming to retain its place among the top payments companies even as the technologies surrounding payments around are revolutionized by the mobile platform.

NFC, which stands for near field communications, is a wireless technology that allows you to send and receive data over short distances just by tapping or waving your phone. Google will use NFC in its Google Wallet service to enable mobile payments at the point-of-sale, as well as to deliver coupons and offers directly to users' phones.

With Sprint's update, we're now one step closer to seeing Google Wallet go live.

Payments Disruption Still Far Off

Even though the update means Google Wallet can work, it's unknown at this time how soon it will . Google said the service would launch sometime this summer, though, so it can't be much longer.

But this single launch won't immediately bring disruption to the payments industry - it's just one small, initial effort. For Google Wallet to be successful, or for any NFC-based mobile payments initiative to work for that matter, NFC has to see wider adoption by handset makers and OEMs. There are still only a handful of phones that support NFC, such as the Google Nexus S devices made by Samsung, plus the upcoming BlackBerry Bold phones (9900/9930), Nokia's Astound and some variants of the Samsung Galaxy S II.

In addition, for Google to lead in the mobile wallet space, it will need to expand its service beyond one operator, one bank and one payments network. And rollouts like that will take time, measured in months, if not years.

Google is not the only company building a mobile wallet platform. This fall, we'll see Visa's digital wallet go live and, next year, the operator-led Isis consortium will begin trials of its own mobile wallet service. There's also the elephant in the room: Apple. There have been conflicting reports as to whether the next iPhone will include NFC. Failing to do so will mean that mobile wallet innovation will be supported by nearly all Apple's smartphone rivals in some way, but it will also mean that NFC will lack the mainstream appeal and acceptance that only Apple seems to bring.

NFC support isn't the only new feature rolling out in today's Nexus S 4G update. Other enhancements are detailed here. In addition, some reports state that Android 2.3.5 is part of the package, too.

Other sources: This is My Next..., DroidLife, NFCWorld

BlackLocus is attempting to deploy advanced machine learning and revenue management techniques in a cloud-based service that would give small and medium businesses the same types pricing knowledge and advantages that industry leaders like Amazon deploy. Competitive product pricing for long-tail merchants online is a difficult goal to accomplish. Black Locus attempts to take the guesswork out of the process.

Black Locus claims that it has been able to boost its clients' profits by 15% through the use of its platform. It is an innovative idea and one that could have legs. Essentially, it is a SaaS offering aimed at the under-served middle of the online e-commerce market that brings in pricing information across the Internet to the merchants fingertips. The company just raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from DFJ Mercury and Silverton Partners.

"The rapid growth of online commerce has created terrific opportunities for both large and small online retailers," said Blair Garrou, managing director of DFJ Mercury, in a press release. "Our firm was impressed with the BlackLocus team and believe their cloud-based pricing optimization tools level the playing field for small and mid-sized online retailers."

Black Locus takes stock of pricing and inventory levels and delivers recommendations to the merchant in terms of what they should price their products and how to position them.

There has been movement recently in aggregating data in the realm of e-commerce. The more data that companies or individuals have, the better they are positioned, especially when it comes to any type of sales vertical. Project Slice recently launched as a service that aggregates users purchase receipts (and can be found in a featured tab in Yahoo Mail). Black Locus is reminiscent of the same type of data aggregation as Project Slice. It is difficult to take disparate sources of information and drag them into one location tailored to the needs of the user. Black Locus is on that road for small and medium businesses, bringing usable data to the masses.

The new service brings a "one-click" payment option to any Verizon mobile phones that ship with a Web browser. No upgrades will be required to use the service, says Verizon - the option to pay using your mobile will simply appear as a link on the merchants' websites.

For larger purchases that a customer may not want to charge to their monthly phone bill, the option to link a Payfone account to a credit card will be made available.

The deal, which was first reported by The Wall St. Journal on Friday, has been officially confirmed by the companies today.

What makes Payfone unique is its security system. Unlike traditional payments network, it leverages the security built into the mobile operator network while processing transactions. To do so, it ties a customer's SIM card, device ID and location to their account, so that it knows when a different phone is used, or when a phone is used in an unusual location. Payfone also takes advantage of the global SS7 signaling network for connected payment authorization and processing. The end result is a location-based, customer-specific approach to fighting fraud, reducing risk, chargebacks and identity theft.

Payfone is also used by American Express's new Serve payments platform, which just today launched into a partnership with AOL.

Other Verizon Initiatives

Verizon is also involved in other payment initiatives including Isis, a mobile payments service launched along with T-Mobile and AT&T that will allow customers to pay at point-of-sale using their mobile phones.

It should be noted that this is not the first carrier billing program provided by Verizon. BilltoMobile, a Verizon partner since March 2010, teamed up with mobile payments companies BOKU and Zong in January, to offer expanded direct carrier billing options to Verizon customers. The new relationship with Payfone does not aim to replace this current partnership or any other initiative, says Verizon, it only serves to complement them.

If you haven't yet heard of Dwolla, you should know that this company has no plans to be a minor player in the payments space. Its vision for a payments network is based on the idea that consumers should get to dictate how their payments network operates, not third-parties, says CEO and co-founder Ben Milne. And cash, not credit cards, is Dwolla's inroad to its planned disruption. "Cash," says Milne, "is a poorly represented market in electronic payments."

With Dwolla, the payment network is devoid of personal information - the same information that's the current source of $8.6 billion in credit card fraud annually here in the U.S. “If Visa could blow up their current payment model and start over today, would they build a network that forces consumers to expose critical financial data in order to buy a bagel?," asks Milne, in describing how Dwolla is different.

Like Facebook Connect for Payments

Instead, that personal information is held within Dwolla's walls. When a third-party chooses to integrate Dwolla into their application, a familiar-looking dialog box appears. Much like how Facebook Connect asks you if an app can access your Profile information or your Friends List, Dwolla's permission box asks you if the app can access your balance summary or your transaction details, among other things.

For example, if a service like Mint.com was going to use Dwolla, it may only need access to your transaction history. If a marketplace where you buy and sell things integrates Dwolla, it would need permission to send money.

Also like Facebook, consumers can go in later and revoke an app's access to their personal data.

Disruption: Electronic Cash, Cheaper than PayPal, Works over Facebook & Twitter

To make these cash-based payments possible, Dwolla has partnerships with The Veridian Group, a subsidiary of Veridian Credit Union, in Waterloo, Iowa, and The Members Group (TMG) another financial and credit union service organization owned by Iowa credit unions and their members. Through these organizations', which hold the funds in Dwolla's users' accounts, people can send and receive money from their own bank accounts for a flat 25-cents per transaction, regardless of the transaction amount. That's lower than PayPal's 30-cents per transaction fee. Plus, there's no additional percentage amount per transaction, even though PayPal currently charges an additional 2.9%.

For consumers, these cash-based payments can be shared with social networking friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. To use Dwolla, you simply register for an account, add your friends from your social networks, then click over to a "Send Money" section on the Dwolla site to send a friend some cash. The friend is alerted to the transaction by way of a direct message on Twitter or Facebook wall post.

Businesses, including those operating online and brick-and-mortar retailers, wanting an alternative to PayPal can also use the service, which is now poised for integration into more applications and platforms through the new Grid API, which allows for this integration into third-party platforms. Because Dwolla uses standard Oauth technology, the number of platforms which could easily integrate its service include everything from mobile apps to banking platforms and more.

Square, Google Wallet & Others Could be Partners, Not Competition

As for other disruptive payment startups and services like Square, the credit card swiping dongle for mobile devices, Zaarly, the hot, new location-based, real-time mobile marketplace, and Google Wallet (Google's wireless mobile payment service), Dwolla doesn't see these as competition, but future partners. Dwolla could be integrated into Google's Wallet app as the "cash" option, for example. It's already in talks with Zaarly, too, with a deal expected.

And Dwolla has more up its sleeves, too. The company is working on other "unique solutions" alongside the Federal Reserve, which it won't say much about at this point, only that "they will weigh heavily on user experiences and transactions." Going forward, Dwolla also has its eye on the burgeoning couponing market, especially the local deals services which these days includes companies like Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Offers and others. Says Milne, Dwolla will get more involved in this market over the next year.

In the meantime, the company is focused on spreading the word about Grid as well as FiSync, a service that allows banks to offer Dwolla to their customers directly, without the need for pre-loaded Dwolla accounts held elsewhere.

Anyone interested in trying Dwolla for themselves can do so here. Businesses can learn more here.

Google announced both Google Wallet and Offers today, which give users the ability to process payments through smartphone via NFC. Google Wallet will first be available for Nexus S Android phones via Sprint this summer and expand to other NFC-capable phones over time. The initial rollout will be in New York City and San Francisco. Wallet will first support a Citi MasterCard wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted as well as a prepaid Google card. Now that NFC mobile payment is finally a reality, will it be a game changer in how people pay?

The original online payments leader, PayPal, expressed skepticism that Google can be a leader in payments.

"As the mobile payment leader (we expect $2 billion in payment volume to transact over mobile devices via PayPal in 2011), we'd be happy to comment," said PayPal spokesperson Anuj Nayar. "Put simply - before you try mobile (or any other payments) solution, you need to be great at payments. There is so much more than just technology involved to get payments right ... Any new solution must deliver something better than the existing way to do it. Not just different ... better."

Google rolled out the partners for the announcement today and there are some heavy hitters on the list: Citi is the bank behind the service, First Data is a point-of-sale company that handles 40 billion transactions a year, Verifone and Sprint will be the original handset provider through the Nexus S. Between Citi and First Data, there is enough payment knowledge that PayPal is now on notice as well.

Offers Goes After Groupon & Daily Deals

Groupon has yet another competitor as Google will deliver Offers to email inboxes and there will be deals through check-ins, online advertisements and Google Places. Groupon has partnered with Loopt and possibly with Foursquare in the past week, but the difference between Google Wallet and Groupon is that Wallet will be an app on any Android NFC phone, which according to Google, should be 150 million devices worldwide by 2014.

"This is not just an announcement, this is a real project," said Google's Osama Badier, a former top executive at PayPal.

Wallet & NFC Will Be Secure

One of the issues surrounding mobile and online payments has been security. Google said that it has taken industry best practices and added an additional layer on top. Payment information will be encrypted on the phone and the transaction will be secure between the merchant POS system and the security chip that manages the wallet on the smartphone. The wallet cannot be used unless it is unlocked with a PIN and NFC will be disabled if the phone's screen is off.

"We took the industry standard best practices with PayPass and smart card-based payments and wanted to make sure we added extra on top of that to really protect consumers and their credit card information," said Robert von Behren, one of the co-founders of the Google Wallet project. "This chip has a lot of security baked into it and this is where we are storing the credit card information."

Coming Soon...But Not Too Soon

While Google Wallet and Offers are cool, it may take a while for the technology to become mainstream. Smartphones sales are increasing exponentially and within the next several years most people will own some type of smart device with NFC enabled. But, if you thinking about paying for your Christmas presents with your phone this winter, you probably will not be able to. Holiday season 2012 is more likely.

"This will accelerate the growth of NFC technology and handset adoption, however, it is still at least 1-2 years away from mass adoption and significant market penetration," said Dan Trigub, VP of business development at mobile advertising specialist Blue Bite. "That said, this will help advance the adoption and awareness of the technology as we are very excited about it. Likewise, given the growth of the mTAG and our NFC content delivery platform, this is something that we would ultimately want to integrate and offer through our network as well."

The news about Google Wallet broke last night after an internal memo from The Container Store was leaked on ThisIsMyNext.com and NFC company ViVoTech let slip the news as well to TechCrunch.

In this case, MasterCard's main goal was to understand users perceptions about NFC, short for near field communication, an emerging technology that allows mobile phone users to make purchases just by waving or tapping their phone to at the point-of-sale.

You can learn more about NFC in our ongoing series which begins here. More on MasterCard's NFC trials is here.

Increasing Demand over the Years

In comparing these survey results with another, separate survey MasteCard conducted in 2010, you can see the growing demand and interest in mobile payments, especially among the younger demographic.

In 2010, respondents under 30 had shown a 67% increase (15% in 2009 to 25% in 2010) in the number of purchases made with their mobile phone, for example. In this same time period, they increased their daily mobile phone access to their bank's online services by 79% (14% in 2009 to 25% in 2010).

Other Perceptions, Gender Divides

The new survey found that over half (54%) of the respondents feel that a mobile phone can tell you more about a person than their wallet. It also examined some of the psychological aspects to using mobile payments technology, and how the technology may be perceived differently among men and women.

Men were found to think of phones as more functional necessities, while women had a more personal relationship with their phones. Men were also more willing to adopt mobile payments, as more men than women (51% vs. 40%) said they would be at ease with making purchases using their phones. More men than women (49% vs. 45%) also said they would be impressed by someone who paid a bill with a mobile phone instead of a credit card.

However, women's personal relationship with their phone was revealed in other findings. For example, 50% of women feel more "exposed" without their phone as compared with only 36% of men.

While overall, the survey reports a general consumer readiness for mobile payments, a measurement of what people say they will do is not typically as accurate as measuring what people will actually do. In addition, nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents said they need confirmation that mobile payments are safe before they would adopt the new technology, which means both marketing and advertising agencies have challenges ahead of them to push mobile payments into mainstream use.

Source: MasterCard

Through a newly announced partnership with Mobile First, the company will now reach billions more subscribers in the EU, Asia and South America, it says.

BilltoMobile works with merchants to provide them with this alternative payment option, and processes the transactions so the merchants themselves don't have to work with all carriers around the world.

New Global Service Launches Next Month

The new global service will launch in May, BilltoMobile reports. In addition to Danal Co., Ltd. and U.S.-based Mobile First, BilltoMobile will also add one or two more partners that will allow it to expand to other parts of the world where it finds gaps in its current coverage.

But the company still has its work cut out for it. As Jim Greenwell, president and CEO of BilltoMobile notes, "the global payments market - and in particular the EU - is still very fragmented, and no one payment company has been able to establish the consistency and clear cut 'best operations and rates' globally that BilltoMobile has been able to attain with our Direct Carrier Billing service in the U.S."

In Europe, there are over half a dozen leading mobile payment providers, depending on the country. To enter the market, BilltoMobile has chosen to partner with those providers that offer the most advanced technologies in their region, instead of positioning itself as a new payments company trying to gain traction.

BilltoMobile did something similar here in the U.S., partnering with leading mobile payment companies Zong and BOKU to expand the direct carrier billing options for Verizon Wireless customers, back in January.

The company says it will announce more live carriers and agreements with resellers, merchants and payment providers very soon.