Apparently Consumers Don’t Trust Google or Apple With Mobile Payments

An interesting study from Ogilvy … and a not so surprising response given our historical payment relationships are with the traditional payment brands. Should be interesting to track changes here though as it’s quite clear that Apple and Google will both be evolving considerable solutions. Even though Apple has yet to formally announce payments, they already have over 200 Million cards on file and are ready to roll. With or without NFC.

via Adage

 

Bridging digital with physical

c60 Redux from IDEO on Vimeo.

This is a very cool concept from IDEO Boston. I love the return of physicality to music as it’s something I definitely miss as well. Seeing the use of RFID has me thinking that it will be possible for an idea like this to happen pretty realistically as well. The current c60 Concept is just that … but with phones and NFC quite a bit could be possible beyond this initial view.

Starting next week, a mainstream (one you want) device will be in market with NFC, the Google Nexus S. As Engadget handily pointed out, there are three types of communication possible with the chip: Send, Receive and Exchange. Exchange is really where things could get interesting.

The table shown in the video is really just a proxy for the computer and represents the place where we share together. Through NFC, an enterprising developer could enable all my music cards through the current media player.

Imagine if the current iPad iTunes layout allowed for more of a tap and share between friends. Hey check this out and you could listen and see the liner notes as we hung out. I know the Apple Remote, GoogleTV, Boxee etc all allow some level of control over Wifi, but there’s no way to easily do this with another person without relinquishing control or first syncing your devices. NFC could provide that simple gestural authorization … because we are close and actually together.

A fair bit has to evolve for the physical to be properly extended here. I would love to see the return of liner notes (not just lame PDFs) but interactive documents we could review while listening and even pass to a friend when listening together. Music is inherently social, yet most of it seems to happen through portable players with headphones now.

This may still be a bit half-baked, but there’s definitely something here …

Is Blaze Mobile BS?

I signed up for Blaze Mobile over the summer and while I have received a number of emails from the company touting how wonderful they are, I have yet to receive my NFC sticker – the core product they offer.

When I questioned this I received the following:

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, our bank requires us to mail the stickers with a plastic prepaid card which are on back-order. As soon as they are in, we will mail both to you.

In the meantime, you can use 90% of the Blaze Wallet without the sticker including the following just to name a few:

  • You can get your account balance and receipts from over 8,000 financial institutions
  • You can load your reward cards for hotels, airlines, rental cards and get your point balances
  • You can purchase movie tickets
  • You can search for restaurants and other points of interest and get turn-by-turn directions
  • You can create expense reports (iPhone version only)

Last I checked, there’s nothing unique or beneficial about doing any of this stuff with Blaze.  I would not even consider Blaze the source for any of this activity … The only semi-interesting bit is the expense report though it’s highly unlikely that it would work with our corporate system and most importantly what would I be expensing without a way to pay??

I get that NFC payments are still largely considered new and mainly in tests outside of a few cases like retail and transit cases  – at least in NYC.  What I don’t like though is how a product is openly marketed as real and prevalent with little to no “customer” communication about where things really stand.  When I signed up there was no mention of a backlog on pre-paid cards … and come on really?  Is it that hard for whatever bank is backing this to issue a card?