{"id":10077,"date":"2015-01-28T11:15:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T05:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=10077"},"modified":"2015-02-13T22:07:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:37:34","slug":"wallet-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2015\/01\/28\/wallet-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallet Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, thanks to Uber having to comply with RBI regulations<\/a>, I was forced to introduce myself to Paytm. The entire signing up episode\u00a0reminded me of a post I had written in early 2014 – “The overhaul of currency<\/em><\/a>“, though that dwelt more on the broad changes and implications rather than the functional aspects. Mobile payment systems\u00a0have been on a fast evolutionary path for a while now. (a bit dated, but I found this infographic<\/a> to be a good primer)<\/p>\n

I also remembered a Seth Godin post from 2009 that called Twitter a protocol<\/a>. On the web, the subsequent discussion then was that just as we were transferring links and messages on the platform, we would soon be transferring money too. That took a while coming though – it was only in late 2014 that Twitter released a payment service<\/a>. \u00a0A week before that, a hacked screenshot<\/a> had begun rumours of Facebook’s Messenger having the wherewithal for money transfer. But they were both late entrants in a market that was already crowded with the likes of Paypal, Google, banks, credit card companies and so on. Apple Pay would join later.<\/p>\n

\"money\"While this in itself is an extremely fascinating area, I\u00a0am actually much more interested in the evolution of another category of players evolving in this context – the messenger services. Not only do I see a significant role for them in this arena, I also see this in relation to the trends in the next era of social<\/a>, specially because of the close association with mobile. Back in February 2013, Blackberry was considering an entry into the money transfer market through its messenger service. (via<\/a>) But WeChat was the one that really made me take notice. From selling 0.15 million Xiaomi phones in ten minutes<\/a> to 20 million cab rides getting booked in just over a month<\/a> through a cab app integration to utility bill payment<\/a> to\u00a0adding\u00a0support for brands<\/a> to allow customers to buy products or services within the app, WeChat is relentlessly growing<\/a>. Of course, this is in a market where AliPay (Alibaba’s wallet) hit 190 million users (via<\/a>) but the important point here is that WeChat began as a communication protocol. They are not the only one though. KakaoPay\u00a0is also growing<\/a>. Late last year, Snapchat introduced Snapcash<\/a>, a money transfer service, in partnership with Square. Around the same time, Line announced that it would be launching LinePay <\/a>around the world. It already has various services like food delivery,\u00a0maps\u00a0etc\u00a0operating inside the app, in Japan. And it is Line that is\u00a0the immediate prompt for this post.<\/p>\n

A fortnight back, in Change Strategies<\/a>, I had noted Uber’s potential in the context of adjacency platforms. Virgin was, as mentioned in the post, following an audience, while Uber would be following an expertise, with its API at the core. In my mind, I had favoured the Uber approach, because I felt Virgin’s brand dependent play was relatively more fragile. But I\u00a0was forced to rethink when I saw a\u00a0different play on following an audience\u00a0– \u00a0Line\u00a0just launched a taxi service in Japan<\/a>, going head to head with Uber.\u00a0On a relative note, Line is much closer to a connection\/relationship economy than Uber, but an API might be seen as more friendly by\u00a0a third party brand. (who would want to be held hostage again, after the Facebook publishing experience) More the linked services, more the users who would be interested, but it also works vice versa. It’s a journey to the same point from almost opposite directions. Who will get there first and how, that’s what makes this all very interesting, especially in a mobile-only digital strategy<\/a> era! An economy in an app, which app though?<\/p>\n

We began with Paytm, and it’s a coincidence that a couple of days back, I saw, courtesy a TOI front page ad, that Paytm had launched “The Best Price Revolution”, allowing users to shop “for crores of products from over 500 categories”<\/p>\n

(image via<\/a><\/em>)<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, thanks to Uber having to comply with RBI regulations, I was forced to introduce myself to Paytm. The entire signing up episode\u00a0reminded me of a post I had written in early 2014 – “The overhaul of currency“, though that dwelt more on the broad changes and implications rather than the functional aspects. Mobile payment […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,2538],"tags":[89,4751,4587,4756,4362,266,4342,4589],"class_list":["post-10077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-future","category-ideas","tag-facebook","tag-kakaopay","tag-line","tag-paytm","tag-snapchat","tag-twitter","tag-uber","tag-wechat"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10077"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10158,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077\/revisions\/10158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}