The Application of M-commerce
1.6.4 The Application of M-commerce
Along with the popularization of mobile telecommunication technology, real time data exchange of mobile financial service is the direction for financial industry. Consumption patterns of customers will be free from the restriction of areas, time and fixed transmission routes with each passing day. The changing mobile payment is changing people’s consumption habits. Currently, though cellular phone users who are attempting to make payment by phones take up 10% of the whole users, according to some foreign research institute, the world m-commerce consumers will have amounted to 1.67 billion, generating the income of $554 billion by 2008.
Currently, m-commerce service mainly covers: online purchase, online finance, online bank, transfer payment, loan application, electronic lottery, electronic shopping, mobile stock transaction etc.
Owing to service supplied by m-commerce, users can operate conveniently, and financial and commercial institution can also lower cost and raise efficiency. It is m-commerce that avoids the troubles and difficulty in cash transaction such as insufficient fund, false currency, caring and carrying. Apart from this, the privacy of customers in business is also guaranteed in the process of punching the card, because the valid identification of the card holders and the trade authenticity of the sale will be verified by banks and receipt will be printed when the transaction terminates.
Several characteristic m-commerce applications will be introduced as follows. (1) Points of Sells (POS) NTTDoCoMo, the Japanese mobile phones industry magnate opened the
settlement and authentification service by built-in non-contact IC card— “i-modeFeliCa” in Jul., 2004 and manufactured subsequently four types of such mobile phones. With the service and above mentioned cellular phone, expense will be subtracted from the phone after radio recognition and identification as long as the consumer makes his phone face the electronic scanning equipment of the adding machine, which is like the use of credit card without key operation. Because the above four kinds of phones all can be Internet connected and enable consumers to replenish money into the phone from his credit card via Internet. Apart from substituting purse, the new cellular phone can also act as train ticket and other identification cards. Some Japanese airport has already allowed the passenger to make use of the cellular phone to speed up security check. JCB, a Japanese credit card company, will release a new service to enable enterprise clients to use built-in chip phone as the electronic key to business building at the end of this year. In the next year, consumers will be able to pay the train ticket fee by cellular phone.
POS, the extension of wired POS, enables clients punch credit cards anytime and anyplace, getting away from the restriction of operation site and communication routes by making use of SMS or GPRS. The presence of POS system meets the
Introduction to E-commerce
expanding requirements. The “selling while walking” is realized with m-commerce and various open-air toll house, which brings customers unlimited business opportunities.
The presence of POS business embodies vividly technical advantage in financial field. Currently, to become competitive in technology means pooling flood of fund into technology and introducing new types of financial services by means of advanced technology means. The development of wireless POS application system enables developing banks to rush to introduce new financial services and take up the new field and better their own images. What is more, the development of wireless POS application system enables developing banks to free from the restriction of places and routes, expand their financial services and space, bring a large amount of deposit and become competitive. Last, the development provides a brand-new settlement and promotes the sound development of e-commerce.
(2) Mobile booking Information about the nearest restaurant, movie theater or theater can be sent
to the consumer’s mobile phones in terms of location technology, which enables the customer to book cinema ticket or have dinner by his mobile phone.
According to the report on the prospects of booking ticket by mobile phones by Juniper Research, a British market survey company, this service will have made up the majority of m-commerce by 2007 and been expanded to $39 billion in scale, making up half of the whole turnover of m-commerce, $88 billion by 2009. Consumers, especially customers in Europe and Japan, have begun to show their interest in Mobile booking tickets of trains, buses, films and dramas and car parking.
The mobile phone booking has the potential of becoming the large-scale market, and will extensively be used in sales of commodity and tickets because acquisition is extensive to apply, and the cost is also very cheap because of the low risk and cost, which makes a large number of customers are willing to have a try.
(3) Mobile phone bank The mobile phone bank, mobile bank, is the abbreviation for banking business
by mobile phones. It can be regarded as “service for the convenience of the customers” carried out by financial institution with the help of new technical platform of mobile carriers. A customer just does as the mobile phone prompts,
he can enjoy personal financing service provided by mobile banks and complete the following things: account information inquiry, transfer between accounts, silver credit transfer, stock jobbery, personal firm offer, exchange transaction, payment, and financial information inquiry etc.
The products of mobile phone bank consist of SMS and WAP. The SMS mobile phone banking business is comprised of mobile phones, the GSM message center and banking business system. The connection of GSM message center and mobile phones can be connected by and GSM centers by the communication between system, and the connection of GSM message center and bank systems can be connected by network. In some cases, the message center maybe connected
1 Fundamentals of E-commerce
with the bank preposing machine by a value-added service platform to reduce the burden of message center. The SMS mobile phone bank has won high favor of the consumers in the Asia.
This business has been released by financial institutions in China such as Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China Merchant Bank. While abroad, the service of the Korean SK telecom- munication is characteristic. The company releases the brand new service “M- BANK” as the important business in the mobile financial service brand “MONETA” by integrating remittance service of the company. Consumers can enjoy the e-commerce service such as bankbook, cash card business, and Internet bank etc. by the mobile phone with built-in intelligence chip. The user can do business in the ATM of the bank or even roam in some neighboring countries, free from the restriction of the time and space.
In addition to the above mentioned business, M-commerce will find something new in what is old as time goes on. For example, in essence, the current amusement-centered IVR can be used to aim at enterprise users in commercial business. Currently though there is no special IVR product for enterprise users, the voice system of IVR enables them to have teleconference and communicate anytime and anyplace, greatly improving the work efficiency and reducing the cost of conferences. Though it is just a speculation, it must be a process for a consumer to know a rising business from acquaintance to habituation, understanding and reliance. It is beyond doubt that with the development of IVR business and the progress of technology, mobile IVR will be applied in enterprise in the near future.
Similar to Internet commerce, the bottleneck of M-commerce development is the security of the information of users and transaction. Presently, several principal Korean carriers are intending to develop hand in hand information security standard for M-commerce industry in order to break the bottle neck and lay a solid foundation for exploring a greater market.