Square may have just landed a massive deal with Starbucks, but that’s not stopping the company from innovating. Today Square launched gift cards on the latest version of its Wallet app for the iPhone and Android, allowing you to send and use gift cards without carrying around a piece of plastic
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/09/square-launches-digital-gift-cards/#sAPtQ2JMPGzx3jHv.99
The other perspective from Tien Tzou, It’s not about subscriptions versus pay-per-use. Just as industries have different needs, businesses and customers are different and so have varying needs.
Is a pay per use model fairer than a monthly subscription?
EBay tallied 153 percent more mobile transactions this year than it did on Black Friday in 2011. PayPal spiked even higher with mobile owners. Black Friday 2012 brought about a 193 percent increase to PayPal mobile payments over the previous year.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/24/ebay-paypal-black-friday/#4TSaxVPMu3bw3weV.99
Between the iPhone and iPad, iPad users spend more money and time on eBay apps. For mobile this year, fashion and tech are the largest verticals for eBay.
Some more structure around building MVP in a Lean Startup from Google Ventures Design Studio.
If you’re running a lean startup, “launch and learn” is undoubtedly a familiar mantra. But launching a new feature can take weeks or even months, and for a scrappy startup that’s a potentially make-or-break issue. Our design studio works with dozens of startups each year to help teams define their products and features. Through the process of doing this over and over again, we’ve collected a time-tested toolkit of methods for learning that are cheap, fast, and perfect for startups to find those crucial mistakes earlier and then adapt their plans more nimbly. The result is almost always that they ship better products and do so even faster.
Most teams think they need to build an interface that functions and looks real before showing it to customers to get feedback. Nope. It turns out that if you string together a few simple mockups with clickable hot-spots, you can still…
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Great information on how Spotify keeps the Lean Startup approach alive using squads
Visa’s digital wallet V.me helps simplify transactions online and on mobile and will move to in-store point of sale next year.
Visa’s (s v) digital wallet and PayPal (s ebay) competitor V.me is now ready to go prime-time after debuting in beta a year ago. The credit card company is officially launching the service today and announcing 50 banking partners and two dozen merchants who will support the wallet initiative.
V.me is Visa’s attempt at creating a digital wallet that makes transactions easier. It allows users to pay online with a Visa or other credit card using a user name and password instead of entering a 16-digit card number and their address. V.me is available online and on mobile and will roll out to in-store point of sale next year.
Visa is relying on banking partners to help sell V.me to their 50 million customers. It has signed up deals with PNC and U.S. Bank along with about 50 other smaller banks, who will offer V.me directly to their customers. Some…
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iZettle Visa workaround for Europe is still very clunky…
Apple doubles sales per sq ft of next closest, Tiffany’s again. In the Apple Stores, Apple is building its image as the most service-oriented company in the computer and consumer electronics industries.
MyRetailCloud Blog 