Who is winning the mobile payments war?
While we’re in stealth (dev) mode, we specifically and utterly focus on getting everything in place for the launch of our product. This means we have to tackle development issues on iOS, Android and Web. Another is the integration of in-app payment functionality. We want to give our users a platform for dealing with peer-to-peer transactions, without leaving our app for a second.
Although we’ve spent considerable time on this for f*#$^%& ever, we were never able to find time to fully commit to the integration of this particular feature. However, several weeks ago Steven and I started working out all the deal flows related to the integration of a payment provider. After a couple of days filled with tons of meetings we finally found a product that met our requirements.
The next step was the ‘easy part’ (at least, that’s what we thought). We figured we should not be developing something like this ourselves. Therefore, we managed to find a bunch of companies that could process payment transactions. We set up meetings with the ones we could relate with the most. We soon figured out this was a market ready for disruption (for the entrepreneurs amongst us: this is a free(!) give-away market opportunity).
We kicked off with the mother ship of all payment providers in the Netherlands: Currence. Note: Currence is the umbrella company of iDeal. Our specific interest was Currence’ future plans with iDeal and mobile payments since this captured our biggest need.
We spoke a particularly long time (BIG THANKS!) about potential plans iDeal had with mobile and peer to peer transactions and found out there were numerous challenges to conquer. However, we were told that this is a market dominated by the big five banks. Without their consent, we would be nowhere. It turned out that there wasn’t anything coming up in the next couple of months. We learned that the Sixpack initiative would be killed. Our hope for a payment provider had vanished which left us with Paypal as only alternative.
We contacted Paypal and figured out there was a small team in Amsterdam. Two days later we managed to get a meeting with their marketplace manager and talked about our plans and the possibilities to integrate Paypal in a mobile app. They even helped us with our business in general (again, thanks guys) Funny detail: Paypal is part of Ebay, and Ebay is currently the owner of one of our biggest competitors in the Netherlands: Marktplaats.nl. So there we were, sitting in the office of Marktplaats.nl without them even knowing). Oeps.
While we’re still talking to other payment providers, we haven’t made a decision about a potential payment system yet. However, we believe we’re close now (thanks to the help of Pascal Spelier from Dutch payment blog Finno and hope to share big news with you soon.
In the mean time, we’re redesigning our iOS App together with some great young design talents and we keep going forward with the design of Android and web. We’ll launch as soon as the products are ready.
Bas
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