'Move over e-commerce, the time of m-commerce has come..', or so claim the technology gurus. The past month I've been receiving a series of promo messages on my mobile. Some of them go like this:
"Download BookMyShow's mobile application. Use the following pin and get Rs. 100 off on your movie tickets."
"Kotak Mtrade Contest: Enable MTrade application and login atleast 5 times & win exciting prizes."
"Book your air tickets between 15 to 20 March through our mobile application and get a flat discount on all tickets booked in this period."
There is a great deal of push from companies cutting across services to get the customers accustomed to m-commerce. This seems to make business sense given the fact that all these companies stand to gain from a medium that is much more closer to the customer and literally at his/her fingertips. After all, the mobile gaming and mobile application markets are touted as the next big thing in India. So, GPRS services and mobile-commerce are the logical next steps.
However, in a stage where even Internet commerce is not fool-proof and hasn't got the complete buy-in from the Indian customer, will m-commerce cut ice with the targetted segment? When one looks at the percentage of GPRS-compatible mobile phones sold in the market and the maturity of GPRS services, it becomes obvious that this clearly is a market with a long gestation period. In my opinion, m-commerce needs more customer-education and assurance at this stage, for the small base segment thats existent today, before one can jump onto the promos bandwagon.
2 comments:
During my intership at axis bank o witnessed a very interesting demo of m commerce( does the term exist or have you coined it?) at the corporate office
they were introducing a be all application that saved all your data on ur mobile be it ur credit card data or debit card ..It worked on fingerprint identification. That is the retailer/any payee would have a reader installed on which you show your fingerprint and connect the mobile with the reader which would enter he data and you could make your payment through any of your chosen cards.. ( i do not recall how the mobile would connect with the reader)
I was immediately struck by the apparent lack of security but the stall guy sssured me it would be safe...he would say that wouldnt he?? :)
@Hriday - It sure sounds unsafe & personally I wouldn't go for it. Considering that mobiles are a primary target for thieves today, much more than the wallet, this would just make it riskier.
Not sure if this was supposed to work some other way. Axis bank has recently unveiled their additional security options wherein, a secondary level of validation has been introduced - mobile / electronic token. Here this is just a second level of validation & with the mobile-option, a passcode is SMSed to the mobile which becomes invalid after single use.
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