Last week my friend and I went to downtown Vancouver to watch the Paralympics opening ceremony. After the event we decided to go to Amarcord Italian restaurant (http://www.amarcord.ca) in Yaletown to have some pasta. When we get the bill, I notice something interesting on the bill jacket – a big QR barcode and a name “Mobio”:

After going home, I did some research on Mobio (http://mobioidentity.com) and figured out that it is a mobile payment service. According to the demo video, a user needs to download an iPhone app (Blackberry and Android app coming soon), register an account, and point your phone camera to the barcode to initiate a transaction.

Watch video here: https://mobioidentity.com/about/company

I am advocating the mobile payment idea (Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment), and glad to see another attempt that leverages the popular iPhone platform. My thoughts:

• Need stronger branding and marketing campaign. I really haven’t heard of it at all
• More appealing website with video and simple comics/illustrations to show customers how easy it is to join and start using it.
• Must also make it SUPER easy for merchant/everybody to create an account and start using it. In the website it doesn’t make it very clear how the merchant side operates. Do you admin using web interface? Desktop app? Another mobile app for the merchant account? Does the transaction happen in realtime? How can a merchant confirm right away that the money is securely deposited? And again, don’t make me read too much. I prefer pictures and video tutorials.
• In terms of UX, need to make it less than 1 minute from seeing the Mobio URL on the bill to finishing the payment.

My thought on the workflow:

1. Open the Mobio app
2. Enter a passcode
3. Camera pops up and ready to snap the QR code
4. Choice to enter card number manually or snap a picture of your credit card. If snapping a picture, the app does OCR immediately to get the credit card number.
5. QR code should also embed the transaction amount and description, so it saves customers’ time and effort to punch in the numbers.
6. Optional tips by amount or percentage
7. Enter Expiry and CVN printed on the back of the card
8. Verify the payment. Slide to pay (to avoid accidental click)
9. Done! Receipt appears on the screen as well as sending an email to you if email address is provided. Option to save the receipt as an image into the camera roll

Important notes:

• No registration necessary. I don’t want to remember yet another set of username/password in order to just pay for a lunch. User can optionally choose to remember credit card number (but always forget CVN) and email address. However if user choose to create a Mobio account, then it’s possible to check payment history, remotely block credit card charge, and set up daily/monthly credit limit (to prevent over puchasing)…etc
• Ensure that the transaction process is ATOMIC and REVERTIBLE, meaning if a call comes in and interrupted the transaction process, no charge will be made to the credit card, or at least restore the screen to the proper state before the call kicks in.
• (Updated Mar 22) When the customer’s transaction is completed (in his/her own headset), the merchant can IMMEDIATELY see the completed transaction in their own handset IN REAL TIME as well. It’s crucial for the store owner to trust the system and be sure that money will come into their bank account. SMS/Push notification are good alternatives for the alert. Even more fun to have a “KA-CHING” sound effect, or Fred Flintstone saying “Yabba dabba do.”

Aug 2010 Update:

For more blog posts about Mobile Payment please go to this tag page.