LINTHICUM, MARYLAND: First Annapolis Consulting, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of its 2011 Mobile Person-to-Person (P2P) Payments Study. This study is one of the first detailed reports on the leading mobile P2P solutions currently available in the U.S. market and draws on content and analysis from first-person tests as well as other analysis of the services’ capabilities.
The report provides a view of the evolution of the mobile P2P ecosystem, and reveals three key themes required for competitive platforms within today’s environment:
- Scalable Adoption
- Simplicity and Ease of Use
- Mobile Wallet Integration
While driving adoption and obtaining scale quickly is vital to a successful P2P platform, it is not easily accomplished. Broad adoption of P2P payments will require significant work to establish these products as socially acceptable methods of payment. Leading service providers are addressing this by offering funding source and destination-agnostic approaches to sending and receiving payments. Users must be able to move funds across multiple channels quickly and be confident that they will not impose difficult means of redemption on recipients. The study indicates that most providers support multiple mobile channels, but few support them all.
Consumers experienced a rapid learning curve on most platforms; typically, users needed 4-5 minutes to execute their initial transaction but only 1-2 minutes to complete subsequent transfers. Some technical difficulties were observed, with a few trials resulting in error screens, timeouts, or failure notifications. It will be imperative that P2P platforms have intuitive and bug free navigation interfaces, coupled with simple transaction execution.
In the long term, mobile wallet integration will be a key driver of success. P2P platforms are positioned to become components of broader mobile wallet strategies. Wallet integration may allow users to not only make P2P payments, but establish an integrated offering that facilitates point-of-sale transactions, e-commerce payments, loyalty and rewards, and mobile banking from a single application.
In addition, the study reviews the core features and functions of each P2P platform and other important topics such as approach to market, pricing, distribution channels, security and authentication to name a few. The 2011 Mobile P2P Payments Study is authored by the First Annapolis Mobile & Emerging Payments team. Paul Grill, the Partner who leads this team is available for interview. For more information, visit the study webpage at http://www.firstannapolis.com/2011-mobile-p2p-payments-study.
About First Annapolis
First Annapolis is a management consulting and M&A advisory firm focused on the financial services industry with a specific emphasis on payment‐related products, services, and delivery. Clients include U.S. and international financial institutions, payment networks, mobile service providers, retailers, emerging payments providers, and government agencies. We offer a full range of services including strategy development, market & competitor assessments, financial analysis & business casing, strategic sourcing, plus specialized risk management and other payment industry specific services. First Annapolis also offers a suite of specialized M&A advisory services that complements our consulting practice.
