July 21 — MEF USA: M-Commerce Guide Launch at RILA, San Francisco

Posted on July 6, 2010

July 21st: Join Impact Mobile in San Fran­cisco to launch the MEF Mobile Com­merce Guide.

MEF Amer­i­cas has pro­duced a Mobile Com­merce Guide to help brands, con­tent pro­duc­ers and retail­ers bet­ter under­stand how to lever­age the mobile phone to drive cus­tomer acqui­si­tion, reten­tion and most impor­tantly con­ver­sion. The guide will be divided into sec­tions to address var­i­ous aspects of M-Commerce, detail­ing best prac­tices, ben­e­fits, stan­dards and case studies.

Vision and Scope

Mobile com­merce (M-Commerce) is built on sev­eral key tech­nolo­gies. Some are very well estab­lished, oth­ers are much newer and less com­mon. Tra­di­tional means of con­sumers pay­ing for con­tent and the use of the mobile for pay­ing for ser­vices is chang­ing. The mar­ket is demand­ing lead­er­ship in Mobile Com­merce. The reces­sion, advances in mobile bank­ing and rum­blings of NFC are all rais­ing inter­est in M-commerce.

MEF Amer­i­cas is launch­ing an M-Commerce ini­tia­tive, phase one of which will be exploratory. The goal of phase one will be to pro­duce an M-Commerce hand­book writ­ten through con­sul­ta­tion with lead­ing indus­try players.

What does the Guide Cover?

The world­wide mobile com­merce (m-commerce) mar­ket place is grow­ing rapidly, enabled by an increas­ing use of micro-payments. While net­work oper­a­tors are still the main pay­ment proces­sor, third-party sys­tems are being made avail­able that can also process mobile pay­ment (includ­ing micro payments).

The com­bi­na­tion of these ser­vices makes it fea­si­ble for busi­nesses to han­dle an extremely large vol­ume of low value sales with­out need­ing an exten­sive chain of retail loca­tions. In addi­tion to pur­chases like ring­tones, music tracks and games, the growth in micro-payments has come from the pur­chase of items like car park­ing and cin­ema tick­ets. The next major area of growth is antic­i­pated to be in vend­ing machines, where a vast reduc­tion in the need to use and han­dle coins would bring large benefits.

http://www.m-e-f.org/initiatives/m_commerce/

About Gary Schwartz

Over the past ten years, Gary Schwartz has played a leadership role in the mobile industry. Gary is the CEO of Impact Mobile, Inc., Chair of MEF North America and is the author of "THE IMPULSE ECONOMY" published by Published by Simon & Schuster, Aria Imprint. Twitter @impulseeconomy In 2002, Gary ran the first cross-carrier short code campaign in North America. In 2006, Gary founded the mobile committee for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) and has worked to publish literature such as the Mobile Buyer's Guide helping extend the digital buy into mobile (for which he received an IAB award for industry excellence in 2009). Additionally, in 2007, Gary started work to help establish a joint task force between the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and the IAB with the aid of the Media Rating Council (MRC) to develop global, auditable mobile measurement standards. In 2010, Gary was elected as the Chair of MEF North America (www.m-e-f.org) with a remit to develop a mobile commerce practice to service brands, retailers and content owners (for which he received a MEF award for industry excellence). In 2011, in partnership with MEF and a number of industry groups including the X9 security standards body, Gary is working to develop m-commerce security and privacy guidelines. Gary is the recipient of the Macromedia People Choice Award as well as the Dodge Foundation award for innovation. Gary is an Asia and Japan Foundation Fellow.
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