Store cards, Coupons, Loyalty cards, all stored on your mobile? Exciting business, simple concepts. 'Gyft' gets going.

  
How many store gift cards do you have in a drawer and never used? In fact, they just go out of date. Most retailers estimate that about 20% are never redeemed, leaving a nice little profit on prepaid cards. Looks like that game is over.....

'Gyft' however, changes all that by allowing you to buy, share and redeem gift cards using your mobile and has just announced Apple "Passbook" integration. Which means buying them (or paying for them) has become much easier. More importantly, so is storing them. How cool is that?

(I blogged about better mobile payments yesterday - so if you're interested, it's the next blog below this one).

Because you can store your gift cards on your phone, it means that you can empty those plastic cards from your drawers and better still, this will warn you as they're about to expire.....Or indeed, to check your balance.They already have about 200 retailers on board but this is a very clever idea that tech was made for. It solves a problem.

Gyft is about bring the plastic card business to mobile by way of an App. 

Mobile is of course, ideal for anything associated with shopping. SnipSnap, a mobile coupon-sharing App and Belly, a loyalty card start-up, are also integrating with Apple's Passbook. SnipSnap for example, allows you to store coupons so when you visit a shop, you can see if you have any coupons for that shop on your phone. You have? use them.

Similarly with Belly, you always have your loyalty card to hand and according to Techcrunch, has been downloaded over 500,000 times. So you're in the store and you always collect your points.

The video above, will show you how to incorporate printed coupons into Passbook. But these are great ideas showing how mobile and apps can solve very simple problems,simply.

The key to them being, the development of mobile payment processing such as "Passbook". And points to Jack Dorsey being in the right place with his 'Square' mobile payments venture.

Again.

Online payments processing is changing. Out with the old, in with the new. Square gets a 3 billion valuation. It's all about time.

I was reading in the FT on Saturday (which is completely recommended as a great weekend paper along with The Sunday Telegraph) about Brad Miller, a techy in California.

He goes into a coffee shop, but the time he gets to the till to pay for his coffee, his picture has appeared on the ipad, which the coffee shop uses as a terminal. The assistant identifies him from the photo, taps the screen and he's paid. It's one new mpayment system called 'Square'.

As he leaves, a receipt drops into his iphone.

This is becoming a world without cash and a world without cards.  Called mpayments (or mccommerce) as in 'mobile payments' it extends the way we buy tickets, coffee and anything from a smartphone. Indeed, one questions the need for ATM's in the future?

Payment processing is something I do know a little about having been involved as a Director with 'Realex payments' from the start, who have been the dominant Irish payments processor for some years. However, what's going on, is an upending of the traditional payments business made possible by tablets and smartphones.

Square, one such new company of about 150 start-ups in the space, headed up by Jack Dorsey of Twitter, reached a 3 billion usd valuation this week. A fairly slick App, it's linked to a users credit card or bank account. Running constantly in the background on a smartphone, it allows facial recognition in shops and that single tap to complete the transaction.

But changing habits will take time and technology can still get better. What it is doing however, is playing traditional payment processors such as Visa, Amex, off the field and indeed, traditional processing companies. 

Paypal are seemingly trying to re-invent themselves and fit into the mobile payment revolution but I think their game is up. Definitely, their margin is up (!) as is the traditional outrageously high margins charged by Mastercard, Visa and all. They're definitely facing a low income future - whatever happens - and about time too.

They'll certainly also have new competitors in the form of these start-ups but also mobile operators, well placed to adopt these new technologies and embed them in handsets. Which is absolutely key. Own the distribution, you own the customer.

Google and Microsoft are moving in and Apple have started, albeit gently, with their 'Passbook'. The space is heating up.

Gathering payment data has also other advantages in linking it to say, coupon features, shopping suggestions or indeed, advertising - and yes, given the privacy issues. 

One thing is certain too, we're looking at a boom in mobile payments at the expense of companies who've had it too long their own way. Digital is changing this business and replacing fat companies with new, lean, smart, start-ups.

And you'll see the new folks win.
And you'll see the big boys fall.
As we've seen before.

And no harm too.