Ebay CEO John Donahoe named David Marcus, founder and former CEO of mobile payment company Zong, to lead PayPal. David Marcus joined PayPal as VP of Mobile when the online payment giant took over carrier billing startup Zong last year. Effective of April 2, David Marcus will succeed Scott Thompson (he left the company in January) as President of PayPal.

As VP of Mobile for PayPal, Marcus has been working on PayPal Here, a mobile payment service for small business. The move shows how important mobile payments have become for PayPal and points the direction the company is heading. John Donahoe commented: “He will bring start-up energy to PayPal’s unmatched global reach and digital payments capabilities. And he will sharpen PayPal’s focus on accelerating product innovation, driving consumer engagement and making paying anytime, anywhere through your digital wallet a safe, easy and convenient experience.”

Check out the infographic below that provides an overview of the companies and their role in the mobile payment industry:

click to enlarge

Created by: Mobilepaymentstoday

UK-based mobile banking technology company Monitise will acquire its US-based counterpart Clairmail for $173 million. The deal is still pending upon regulatory and shareholder approvals. It is expected that the Acquisition will be completed within the next two month.

Both companies provide mobile money services for financial institutions. The acquisition will give Monitise a boost in North America where Clairmail claims 1/3 of the top 50 banks as customers. Combined, Clairmail and Montise provide mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile commerce solutions for 13 million registered users processing billions of transactions worldwide.

Mobile banking and mobile money services are on the rise, Clairmail’s revenues grew by 90% in 2011 to $18 million. The growing market of mobile banking and mobile commerce attracts big payments players such as Visa which recently invested £24.7 Million in Monitise and took over mobile financial service provider Fundamo for $110 million in cash.

American Express has created a nice infographic (based on this study) on how US customers choose to pay for everyday things and how they feel about new forms of payment. Enjoy!

Germany-based Otto Group, one of the world’s largest mail order companies, will launch an online payment services named Yapital. According to Otto, the digital wallet service will enable consumers to make payments across all sales channels. The commercial launch is scheduled for mid-2013.

At present there is little information available but the move looks like Otto is about to create a potential competitor for online payment services such as PayPal, Google Wallet or Amazon Payments. It’s not the first time Otto expands into financial services: big financial services companies like EOS, EOS Payment and Ratepay are part of the Otto Group. Jürgen Schulte-Laggenbeck, CFO of the Otto Group commented: “For the Otto Group, this is a logical continuation of other Group activities in the areas of Financial Services, Multichannel Retail and Service. We are convinced that this young marketplace is large enough for a strong European player.”

Fun fact: The name Yapital actually refers to Yap, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean known for its stone money (even Milton Friedman wrote a paper on Yap’s monetary system). Having no access to metals, the people on Yap used huge, heavy, carved disks of limestone as money. Because moving the stones was really difficult, the islanders started to transfer the stones abstractly by just changing who owns the stone and thus created the first virtual currency. Digital wallets – the functional descendants of stone money

Mobile payment startup ZooZ just launched its mobile payment SDK for Android and iOS. The company provides an easy to integrate mobile payment solution for app developers.

After integration with the ZooZ SDK, developers can offer a mobile wallet that aggregates various payment sources, such as credit cards and PayPal. The service is available in over 150 countries worldwide at competitive rates: ZooZ charges a fee of 2.8% + $0.19 for each successful transaction.

Here is how it works:

ZooZ payment flow

ZooZ was founded in 2010 by former VeriSign engineers and is based in Israel. We had the chance to have a Q&A with Oren Levy, Co-Founder & CEO of ZooZ:

Payment Observer: ZooZ has been testing the mobile payment SDKs in beta program for 3 month. What was the feedback you got?

Oren Levy: We’ve had an extensive and successful beta program, with hundreds of app developers from around the world. Their feedback was very positive – they commended the ease of integration, improved conversion rates, a hassle free payment process for their users and patent-pending security features.

Payment Observer: What are the main advantages of ZooZ compared to other mobile payment solutions?

Oren Levy: There are several advantages to our solution, among them:

• Quick and hassle free integration – Only 3 lines of code are needed to start accepting payments in the app
• Faster mobile checkout experience – No user registration required; no need to install a 3^rd party app
• Multiple payment options – Being the only open payment platform on the market, we offer multiple payment options for increased conversion rates – such as credit cards, PayPal, additional eWallets and soon carrier billing
• Global offering – Unlike other solutions, we allow merchants and app developers in over 150 countries to quickly and easily generate new monetization channels.

Payment Observer: Is ZooZ also addressing developers that sell digital goods?

Oren Levy: Absolutely. Both physical and digital goods markets present a great opportunity for app developers and merchants, and we’re happy to help our community tap the $10b mCommerce market, and start monetizing today.

Mobile payment provider mopay is introducing a multi country recurring billing option for digital content to its mobile payment platform. The new features enable online merchants to offer subscription-based services to their customers. Mopay will gradually roll out the new capability across the majority of its connected countries within the next 12 month.

Online businesses that use the mopay recurring billing feature can offer regular subscriptions as well as temporary trial subscriptions that end after a defined period of time. Mopay offers customizable billing cycles for regular subscriptions; merchants can choose to bill their customers daily, weekly or monthly. The check-out process is the same as for single payments (enter the mobile phone number, receive a PIN via SMS and enter the PIN online); customers can trigger a recurring billing without going through another payment process.

Some of mopay’s clients such as Bigpoint have already implemented the new recurring billing option. According to mopay the feature has also resonated especially well with online dating companies.

PayPal has revealed its new mobile payment solution for small business PayPal Here. Just like Jack Dorsey’s Square, PayPal Here enables small merchants to accept card payments. The service includes an app and a small card reader for smartphones and brings the online payments giant into local stores.

It is no surprise that PayPal is entering the mobile point of sale segment, the success of Square, Intuit GoPayment, and iZettle prove the increasing demand for such services. PayPal Here is part of PayPal’s multichannel strategy; the company is trying to provide payment solutions for online, offline and mobile business.

How does it work?

PayPal Here includes a small triangular card reader and a free app for iOS and Android devices, allowing merchants to accept payments by swiping cards. The card reader is full encrypted and PCI-compliant. The card information can also be manually entered into the app. Unlike its competitors PayPal Here also allows users to scan cards and checks using their phone cameras – a service provided by mobile payment startup card.io.

After signing up and downloading the PayPal Here app, merchants can immediately start accepting payments and receive funds directly into their PayPal account. Merchants pay a fee of 2.7% for each transaction. They will also receive a business debit card with 1 percent cash-back on eligible purchases, cutting the effective fees down to 1.7%. For comparison: Square’s merchant fee is 2.75% for each swiped transaction.

The PayPal Here card reader and merchant app will roll out in United States, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong within the next month (more countries to be announced soon).

Check out the embedded video to see how PayPal Here works:

Mobile payment company BOKU just raised $35 Million in funding from Telefonica, NEA (New Enterprise Associates) and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The fresh money will be used to expand the new BOKU Accounts platform.

BOKU recently partnered with MasterCard to expand its payments technology to cover e-commerce and retail point-of-sale. The new BOKU Accounts service allows subscribers to make payments online, in-app, and in-store via NFC.

The investment shows the increased interest in mobile payments: “Payments are going mobile and we want to be at the forefront of this trend. In addition to the investment we are also embarking on a global partnership with BOKU to enhance our operator billing capabilities and the overall payment experience through our future mobile wallet services,” said Matthew Key, Chairman & CEO of Telefonica Digital.

Community service company G+ (not to be confused with Google’s social network Google+) has put together a nice infographic on the growing mobile payments market.