Last month ZoomPass launched in Canada giving Canadians the ability to send and receive money through a new mobile enabled service. Here’s how they describe their new service:

Zoompass is a unique mobile payment service that offers a new way for you to send, receive, and request money quickly and securely, using a mobile device operating on the Bell, Fido, PC Mobile, Rogers, Solo, or TELUS network. With a mobile application that can be downloaded onto your mobile phone and synchronized with your phone’s contact list, you can use Zoompass anytime, anywhere while on the go.

Zoompass funds are held in a stored value account that is linked to your personal bank account or credit card, which makes loading your Zoompass account and transferring money simple and convenient. You can also use the optional Zoompass Prepaid MasterCard® card with PayPass™, linked to your Zoompass account, to make purchases in-store and online or withdraw cash from an ATM.

Think of it as paypal for Canadians that is fully supported and enabled by Canadian carriers.

It’s a great idea that is long overdue for our market.  After receiving an SMS from ZoomPass notifying me that I’ve received $1 from a friend, I decided to register and take this new service for a test drive.

ZoomPass unfortunately was anything but quick or easy.  Here is a summary of my experience:

1. I received an SMS message that $1 had been sent to me. Super!
2. The SMS message contained a registration link. I clicked on it and was brought to a website that was not optimized for mobile as the flash movie showed up as an empty box in my mobile browser. Moving around the broken flash box on,  I found a registration link and began the process. The SMS should have brought me directly to the registration page and that page should have detected I was coming from an iphone and delivered an optimized experience. Many consumers would give up upon seeing a broken / non-optimized page.
3. The registration process was long. I actually abandoned the process and started over again the following day when I had time to go through the entire process. A better practice would be to allow users to stop & save where they are in the process if they need to continue later. Having to start over again will not motivate people to go through the process again… well unless of course there is a ton of  $$$ waiting for them
4. I received another SMS message with a verification code that I was instructed to enter in step 3 of online registration process. I had to then go to my laptop, go to ZoomPass and then enter the verification code received since this simply was not easy / intuitive for me to do on my mobile device.  Ideally when I received the SMS message with the verification key all I would have to do is click on a link that would auto-verify. This would save time, energy and make the experience much better.
5. After successfully registering I realized there were fees attached to actually depositing my $1 into my bank account – which also required extra steps to validate my banking information. At this point I decided to abandon the process

I then read their press release and discovered 2 points of interest:

1. They have a mobile enabled website at zoompass.mobi which I discovered is fully w3c compliant… which means it will work on all mobile devices. Although great,  their mobile website is very basic with little functionality and is designed for the lowest common device denominator.  As very few Canadians on non-smartphones actually surf the mobile web, I think they need to develop a mobile web version that is optimized for today’s devices and should have an auto-detection script enabled on their website that will serve the right version. Having to promote 2 URLs (one for the desktop experience and one for mobile) just doesn’t make sense anymore.  Typing in zoompass.mobi on my laptop should auto-redirect to the desktop version and visa versa when I type in zoompass.com on my mobile device. This is a best practice that is easy to implement.
2. They have a mobile application! I went to the iphone App store and did a search for zoompass and came up with apps for Meteors, Photo Mania, and DinoColor!  I did some further research and discovered that their app is only available for the blackberry storm! Although the storm is a good device, it doesn’t have nearly the market share of the iphone.  Recent industry reports from Admob and others indicate that there are about 2.5 million iphones and itouches in Canada and about 250,000 Storms. Given that the iphone is driving well over 60% of mobile web traffic, it would have made more sense to launch with an iphone App first so that reach & buzz could be maximized. Apparently an iphone app is in the works.

In order for this service to get mass adoption, it needs to be dead simple & easy for the average consumer to find, use, and share with others. It’s still way easier for me to use my paypal account or send an email money transfer (EMT) through my online banking site.

ZoomPass is in beta mode – so I’ll cut them some slack and remain cautiously postive and optimistic about the future of this service.

If they can address some of the usability issues identified above, they will be well on their way to not only being the first multi-carrier supported mobile payment system, but the defacto standard in Canada.

Here we go again…  here are my 10 informed best guesses on what will happen in the Canadian market place this year. Click here to see how I did against last year’s predictions. 

1. It will be the year of the App store. Every manufacturer in the smartphone space will have a mobile application store, but Apple will continue to dominate the market because they are the only ones who focus on usability first
2. There will be several new models of the iphone announced and launched this year – including a “nano” version.  I predict that copy & paste will still not be among one of its many features
3. Palm Pre will do better than any Android device. Friends, peers and industry pals all mocked me for predicting that they would make a come back when I published some predictions in August, but I’m sticking with this one
4. Mobile security and privacy will become a big focus for marketers and the industry as more people use feature rich smart phones (25% of Canadians are already on them)
5. Mobile payment systems will finally reach retail as both MasterCard and Visa should be ready to go  
6. MMS will fail to reach its promise as the market shifts to the mobile web for richer experiences
7. Both Bell and Telus announce GSM compatibility / network infrastructure upgrades in order to get a piece of the lucrative GSM roaming market and to counter efforts by new regional and national carriers who will be entering the marketing in Q4
8. Microsoft will release a new OS for mobile that includes a 2d code reader that supports their own proprietary M-Tag.  This will finally bring 2d codes into the mainstream in North America
9. All major Canadian news / content websites will have a specific mobile enabled website
10. 40 Billion SMS messages will be sent in Canada – up from about the 20 Billion fore-casted in 2008.

What do you think? Feel free to comment /add your own predictions.

Around this time last year I made some outrageous predictions about what was to come in 2008.  Let’s take a quick look back and see how well I did: 

1. SMS third party advertising will take off.  Didn’t really see this take off in Canada and with the mobile web / and mobile widgets taking off, I can’t see this as a big focus in 2009. Having said that, there are more services popping up that allow media planners to venture into SMS as well as the Mobile web.
2. Mobile Web Advertising will become part of your media buy. This definitely happened in 2008 in Canada with Quattro and Yahoo offering a good mix of inventory to buy. This will only continue to grow in 2009. 
3. MMS Common short codes will arrive. This did happen in 2008 – although not all mobile aggregators are able to facilitate this for you. MyThumb mobile was the first to offer MMS short codes and now you can also go through Magnet Mobile too. 
4. Mobile payments will start to emerge as a new payment medium. There was a great conferences this year on the subject in Canada facilitated by the Canadian Institute.  RBC and Visa launched their pilot program for contactless payments in Canada. Visa also recently launched 4 new international pilot programs. Mastercard also announced this past May that they’re launching a pilot to extend their pay pass program to mobile. 
5. The iphone will finally arrive in Canada. It sure did – and I was right that they waited until the 3G version came out. I also predicted that other retailers may offer the device – which didn’t happen… although both Walmart and select Sam’s Club stores will be selling them in the near future.  Best Buy and Future shop also announced that they would be carrying it. 
6. Fixed or low-cost data plans will be universal. Although not as low as we’d like, we finally have affordable plans in Canada. Yah! I was paying $80 for 500 megs last year and now I’m paying $45 for 500 megs and includes a voice plan. 
7. Mobile web will catch fire. I was partially right here. Thanks to smartphones like the iphone, more consumers discovered the mobile web, but more specifically mobile widgets that grab data from the mobile web have really taken off thanks to the iphone app store. 
8. New mobile carriers will be announced. This happened and was blogged about here.
9. Google will launch their own phone (gphone) with their own operating system and buy U.S. spectrum. The first two happened, but they decided not to aggressively pursue spectrum… this time. There are other auctions coming up in 2009…
10. Social Networking will make the leap from desktop to Mobile as a primary interface / access point. We definitely saw a huge leap in 2008 to mobile – with facebook, linkedin, hi-5 and twitter all offering great mobile options through widgets and mobile web. Twitter saw over 600% growth and a big part of this can be attributed to mobile.  Mobile only social networking sites such as itsmy.com also saw big growth in 2008. They even partnered up with my favorite mobile and social search tool taptu to enhance their member services. 

I published a second list in August as part of a mobile insert at Strategy Magazine.  We’ll take a look at those ones in my next post before making some super crazy predictions for 2009

Today the CWTA released their quarterly report on the mobile industry in Canada. Here are some highlights:

1. Over 350 active mobile marketing programs in Canada right now with a Canadian short code
2. 10.1 billion SMS messages were sent in 2007 in Canada (as previously reported) 
3. Over 1.2 billion SMS messages were sent in Canada in December 2007 alone - making a prediction of 15 billion total in 2008 easily within reach. 
4. As of September 2007, 37% of mobile users had sent at least one SMS message
5. MMA guidelines around mobile advertising and content may be adopted by the CWTA
6. 18 applications have been approved in Canada for mobile payments or micro-payments 
7. May 15th marks the 5th year anniversary of the short code in Canada. Look for information on industry event on txt.ca 

Mobile credit card payments, also known as m-payments, are expected to rise in popularity within the next several years. Surprisingly, a lot of people are unaware of this expanding technology, despite the fact that it can make many of our lives much easier.

M-payments are point of sale transactions that can be made between a mobile device and a contactless reader. If you are in a restaurant that supports m-payment, for example, you can settle your bill from your table in seconds. Although m-payment has only been tested in North America on a trial basis, the technology is being readily used in parts of Asia and Europe.

[Read more →]

It’s a silly excercise, but everybody does it.  After a banner year for mobile in Canada, here are 10 outrageous predictions for 2008:  

1. SMS third-party advertising – every SMS you send is 150 characters…most of which is sent as blank space. I predict new services will take advantage of this in 2008 to deliver SMS advertising to off-set mobile costs for the consumer (but only if they opt-in of course)
2. Mobile Web advertising will take a piece of your media buy. We’ve seen it happen with online media…now with more inventory becoming available off-deck, the time is right to test and pilot this channel
3. MMS Common Short Codes will finally arrive and usher us into a new era in Mobile marketing in Canada….or at least catch us up to the rest of the world.
4. Mobile payments (m-Commerce) will start to emerge from text books, blogs, and sales pitches.  Look for pilots from Interac, Visa and at least one of the major banks next year.
5. The iphone will finally arrive in Canada – but it will be the second generation 3G phone that will support higher internet access speeds and cool features like video calling. This will be offered exclusively on the Rogers network – but don’t be surprised if another non-mobile retailer offers them for sale first
6. Fixed or low-cost data plans will be universal across all carriers in Canada. It’s already started with Bell and Rogers now offers an $80 / month plan for 500 megs of data – plenty for most of us. It’s still a long way from other plans around the world that are 4 times cheaper or better, but it’s a start
7. Due to fixed or low-cost data plans, look for the mobile web to catch fire.  Marketing campaigns will start incorporating mobile web strategies as part of their marketing mix
8. A new mobile carrier will be announced. The Canadian government announced the opening of new spectrum and is reserving a piece of it for a new player and with special engagement rules that will make it easier for a new competitor to enter the market.
9. Google will continue its charge towards world mobile domination. Look for their gphone sometime in the 3rd quarter and look for them to either bid on spectrum in the U.S., buy a carrier like Sprint outright to own a piece without having to go through the auction process or leverage their new mobile platform called Android to get direct access to many subscribers across many carriers.
10. Social Networking will make the leap from desktop to Mobile as a primary interface / access point 

Even if only a few of these come to fruition in 2008, it will be a great year for Marketers and a great year for Consumers.

Happy Holidays!