Recent Posts

Over-the-counter payments are now available at: BDO, Unionbank and EastWest Bank.

Effective Aug 2010, PayPal has adopted the ff. changes in its fees: 1) Chargebacks are now at $20, instead of $10.  2) With full refunds, only the percentage portion is refunded; the fixed transaction fee ($0.30 or P15.00) is retained by PayPal.

PayEasy will be supporting online payments from most of these banks through Dragonpay within the next 6 months.  Online buyers with accounts in these banks will be able to easily pay by debiting it against their account.

PayEasy partners with Dragonpay to allow online buyers to make their payments using online Internet banking or offline over-the-counter banking.  This opens the door for people who want to buy things online but do not have credit cards or paypal.

Megalink celebrated its anniversary last Friday (Mar 19, 2010).  In its Philstar supplement, they claim to have 11 million cardholders.  So I guess the recent defections of Robinsons Savings Bank and Philippine National Bank to Bancnet has taken its toll from its former claim of 12.245 million cardholders in April 2009.

[Mar 19, 2010]

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/03/19/paypal-smartphone-transactions-could-become-important-to-ebay/

Mar 19, 2010

Mobile is Small but Growing Fraction of PayPal Transactions

PayPal’s mobile transactions have increased nearly six-fold from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.  Although mobile transactions were a small fraction of the $2.6 billion in revenue generated by PayPal 2009, we believe mobile will be an increasingly important component of PayPal’s transactions going forward.

PayPal is poised to benefit from both the rising demand for mobile phones and the on-going shift to smartphones.  We estimate that global smartphone units sales will increase from 187 million in 2009 to 787 million by the end of Trefis forecast period.

With more users using smartphones to make payments through PayPal, the number of payments on eBay could increase further.  eBay’s stock could gain 10% if Payments per Account on PayPal were to increase from the 1.2 per month we forecast to 1.4 per month by the end of Trefis forecast period.  You can modify our forecasts for Payments per Account on Paypal to see how eBay’s stock will be impacted if it were to increase rather than remain constant as we forecast.

PayPal joins the fray by providing an iPhone-specific app that allows people to transfer money by just "bumping" their iPhones together.

PayPal mobile transactions increased six-fold in 2009, rising to $141 millioin in 2009 from $25 million in 2008, according to them.  ABI Research predicts people will spend up to $119 billion through their mobile phones by 2015.

December 2009 (Philippines) -- Madison Retailers Inc. (MRI) opens its doors to the internet-savvy locals with its premium apparel brands, Van Heusen and Izod. By creating a website for these brands, MRI will be able to provide a venue for their customers to look at their latest collection as well as allowing them to process transactions from ordering, payment and delivery within a few clicks.  Visit http://www.vanheusen.com.ph.

Assuming the Philippines generally just follow US trends, it will only be a matter of time before people start getting used to paying their bills online.  Right now, majority of banks with Internet banking service already provides such a service.  But as this article noted, even though the feature is there, the challenge is really in getting the end-user to use it.   With 44 million US households as of 2009 and a projected 56 million households by2012, we still have a long way to go.

The article also noted that a large percentage of consumers still receive their billing by paper.  There has to be a major shift to paperless billing before a corresponding increase in online payments will be noticed.  It noted that the marketing challenge is to focus on: reduction of paper clutter, helping the environment (less paper), and safeguarding finances.

How about ATM cardholders?