Localizing Plants vs Zombies for China, and PopCap’s Plans for APAC

Yesterday we told you about how PopCap is soon launching the Great Wall and Kingdoms editions of Plants vs. Zombies in China. This news from the Global Mobile Internet Conference 2012 was then followed up by a Q&A which I thought would be a good read for our readers who want to find out more about PopCap’s plans in China and the Asia Pacific Region.

The person representing PopCap is none other than its CEO, David Roberts himself, who was at Beijing for GMIC. Here’s the Q&A in its full entity:

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1. What is Plants vs. Zombies Great Wall Edition/ Plants vs. Zombies Kingdoms?

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DR: Plants vs. Zombies Great Wall edition (also known as PvZ Great Wall Edition) is a brand new Chinese localized, android system based mobile game. The robust new edition will deliver long anticipated Chinese elements with new maps and new characters. It also provides the first appearance of Chinese mini games.

Plants vs. Zombies Kingdoms (also known as PvZ Kingdoms) is an Android-based social mobile game. This game will attempt to combine the features of traditional Chinese Three-Kingdoms Stories, emphasizing hero training, and confrontational campaigns. Both games will be launched on Tencent’s QQ Game Center, China’s biggest multi-channel game portal.

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2. What is significant about this launch?

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DR: Both games are PopCap’s first self-designed and published Chinese mobile game titles and mark a major milestone for PopCap’s global strategy. Built in China for Chinese players, both games demonstrate the company’s increased commitment to one of the world’s most avid gaming markets.

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3. What is the gameplay in Plants vs. Zombies Great Wall Edition/ Plants vs. Zombies Kingdoms?

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DR: For the Great Wall Edition, this is the first time players can access to the long awaited unique Chinese elements with new maps, new characters, and new games. Also, players can now download the game for free and it’s also the first time that players can purchase in-game items on a mobile device to make them stronger.

For Kingdoms, it’s built on the fundamental core of PopCap’s flagship franchise, but fuses with totally different game elements of the evergreen traditional Chinese Three-Kingdom Story. The new game features a rich kingdom-based story, hero-training and many other new functions that allow players to share achievements with friends, or have a high confrontational campaigns with them. The game is still under development, but this has not prevented it from being the most regionally [anticipated] game on a mobile device PopCap has ever released.

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4. How are the new Plants vs. Zombies games different from existing ones?

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DR: Players always like to see something with their own cultural background. And we are doing this. For the first time, players use their characters with their own cultural background to accomplish new tasks specially designed for them in the game – such as training their own heroes, strategically designing their own way of playing the game and other rewards.

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5. When will PvZ Great Wall Edition and PvZ Kingdoms go live?

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DR: PvZ Great Wall Edition will go live on Tencent QQ Game Center Android system on May 18. PvZ Kingdoms is expected to go live in Q3 of this year on same platform.

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6. Who built the two games?

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DR: PvZ Great Wall Edition was based on the existing PvZ mobile game featuring brand new Chinese elements with new maps and characters. All these new elements were designed and adapted by PopCap’s Shanghai Studio. PvZ Kingdom was entirely designed and developed by [that studio]. The same Studio also developed PvZ Social on Renren in 2011.

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7. Will PvZ Great Wall Edition and PvZ Kingdoms be localised for other markets?

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DR: There are no plans for these two games outside China at this time.

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8. Why did you choose Tencent as a partner in launching these games in China?

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DR: At PopCap, when choosing a partner, one of the first things we look for is a partner who cares about our games as much as we do. Tencent impressed us because they were so excited about this game, and felt almost as passionate about it as we do!

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9. Do you have any special messages for customers/PopCap fans in China this time?

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DR: If you have never tried a PopCap game before, please try Bejeweled Legend and discover why PopCap is one of the most successful casual game companies in the world. And if you are already a fan of PopCap games, then you shouldn’t need much convincing from us. Go try it out!

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10. What is PopCap’s strategy for APAC?

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DR: We seek to extend PopCap’s leadership in casual games to Asia by focusing intently on each local market, building or adapting the right PopCap content for each market. PvZ Great Wall Edition and PvZ Kingdoms are two perfect examples – built in China, for China, it is designed to be successful in China first and foremost.

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11. Why did you decide to develop/launch PvZ Great Wall Edition and PvZ Kingdoms especially in China?

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DR: Plants vs. Zombies is the most popular brand for PopCap in China, we are so amazed to see it is loved and followed by so many fans. We want to do something for our fans in China to return the love from them. We are hoping that PvZ Great Wall Edition and PvZ Kingdoms, developed in China, for China, will definitely help us get in touch with many more new fans in China.

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12. How is PopCap doing in APAC generally?

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DR: PopCap opened its first office in Shanghai for APAC HQ just four years ago, but already APAC is responsible for more than 10 percent of PopCap’s global revenue, and is the fastest growing region for PopCap. Furthermore, we have assembled a highly talented team in each territory working on a variety of exciting new projects.

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13. How is PvZ RenRen doing?

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DR: Plants vs. Zombies Social for RenRen launched last year, and was the number one social game on RenRen for several months. It was also the first social game developed and operated by our Shanghai studio, and we have learned a tremendous amount since its launch. The Shanghai studio is continuing to maintain the game today, while also working on new games for the Chinese market.

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Startup Weekend Cebu participants solving real-world problems

It’s no secret that the Philippines has a growing startup scene with talented designers and developers.

Filled with 200 enthusiastic and hopeful individuals, the room in the University of Philippines Cebu is buzzing with excitement. More than 40 individuals took turns to pitch this time.

It’s Startup Weekend Cebu, the third Startup Weekend held in the Philippines. Tickets for the event are sold out. Much like Startup Weekend Manila, you can’t help but soak in the positive energy all around you.

(Read: A rapturous Startup Weekend Manila, right to the very end)

Startup Weekend Cebu - A long line of people waiting to pitch

For the uninitiated, Startup Weekend is an intense 54-hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.

Team Commute.ph, pitching to solve the problem of a lack of public transportation information

It became clear to me that while Singaporeans like myself were busy solving first-world problems by simplifying photo-sharing and bar hopping, it is a different set of circumstances in the Philippines.

I was delightfully surprised at the diversity of problems that attendees were trying to solve — even more impressed by the standard of their pitches and prototypes.

The crowd favorites were those that were clearly solving a critical pain point in the daily lives of millions of Filipinos.

WaitKnowMore, codetoki and Commute.ph for example, respectively deal with issues such as making long queues more enjoyable, IT graduates more employable and public transport more accessible.

Here’s a rundown of the winners:

WaitKnowMore - they had a great pitch and did a skit to illustrate the problem and solution

1st Place – WaitKnowMore. A mobile SMS service that alerts you when your queue number is reaching. It sends out an SMS when it’s close to your turn and sends you offers from nearby shops to entertain you while you wait. Primarily targeting queues at medical facilities such as hospitals and clinics in the Philippines.

2nd Place - luto.co. A mobile application that acts as your recipe and grocery inventory, so that you’ll never have to wonder “What should I cook?” ever again.

codetoki website - helping students meet hackers

 

3rd Place – codetoki. By far, my favourite idea. It addresses a clear problem, which is improving employability of IT graduates in the Philippines, which currently only has 8 percent employment rate. Codetoki allows students to connect and ask questions from industry professionals about technical skills that are required to bridge the gap. Think Stack Overflow for students.

Kickstart for a Better Life award – WaitKnowMore

People’s Choice – commute.ph

Gwen with the Startup Weekend Cebu crew, Tina Amper in red.

The efforts by successful Filippino tech entrepreneurs and professionals who came back to the Philippines for this event to help build the startup community is commendable.

Led by Tina Amper, a native Cebuano previously based in Los Angeles, Startup Weekend Cebu was organized by TechTalks.ph.

Judges like Winston Damarillo of MorphLabs, Minette Navarrete of Kickstart Ventures and Alvin Gendrano of Microsoft Philippines also demonstrated  their commitment to help build a robust and active startup scene in Cebu.

“It is important that we provide a pathway for our technologists and engineers to become entrepreneurs,” said Damarillo, himself a highly successful technopreneur having founded software companies Morphlabs and Exist, before founding Developers Connect to discover and nurture the natural capacity of the Filipino to innovate and create.

“Our talent pool is scarce and fleeting — it is important to maximize our potential through entrepreneurship.”

Startup Weekend Cebu was definitely an eye-opening weekend for me. It never fails to amaze me the power of what community can do, of how people want to give back and of how technology should be used – to improve the lives of everyone.

Articles about Startup Weekend

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Mixi Denies Nikkei Report that CEO Wants to Sell 55% Stake

There’s much discussion going on today about a Nikkei Business Daily report that says Mixi’s founder and CEO, Kenji Kasahara, is considering selling his 55 percent stake in the company. Mixi (TYO:2121) was very quick to issue a response on on its website, saying that it the report that Mixi was considering selling itself is not true.

It should be noted that Nikkei Business Daily is somewhat hit-and-miss, serving up more than a few juicy rumors that have proven not to pan out, such as the rumor last December of a 4G LTE iPhone coming to Docomo. But given the fact that Mixi has been floundering over the past year.

Indeed, as many as 44 percent of its users now could be so-called ‘ghost users’ who don’t log even log in once a month, as you can see in the chart below from news.livedoor.com [1]:

From: news.livedoor.com

The Nikkei report says that mobile gaming companies GREE and DeNA are to make bids for the CEO’s stake. Serkan Toto has a good rundown of the situation over on his blog, and comments on this possibility:

What’s interesting for both companies is that Mixi is clearly a mobile social network, as over 80 percent of their roughly 30 billion page views come through mobile devices. Another example: the number of smartphone MAU shot up from 3.8 million in July last year to over 7 million in March 2012. Games on Mixi, however, have been a disappointment, financially speaking.

Serkan also notes that Facebook would be unlikely to be interested in Mixi, and we agree given that Zuckerberg and company don’t appear to be having difficulty building a user base in Japan (see Social Bakers for the latest stats).

While there might not be anything to this particular report, the fact remains that Mixi has been more or less treading water for a year. And as more successful social juggernauts continue to float on by, it only makes sense that Mixi make a move soon or else begin to sink.

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1. Thanks to @neojaponism on Twitter for pointing out the Livedoor article.  ↩

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Are You the Chinese Jeff Bezos?

Lei Jun, the renowned Internet tycoon and CEO of Xiaomi, had a lot to say in the recent Global Internet Mobile Conference, where he shared his thoughts on a number of topics.

For example, Mr. Lei claims that traditional business logic does not apply to the Internet. There is certainly some truth to that. Focusing on monetization instead of product and growth is almost certainly the best way to stop the momentum.

However, to lose money in the beginning is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, Silicon Valley’s recent failed bid to disrupt the energy sector shows that, if anything, it’s the technology people that usually expect to spend a little in the beginning and make a lot  (think Google), whereas traditional businesses know that they have to spend money to make money.

This doesn’t mean losing money a good sign. In his definitive account of the Internet Bubble in the 1990s, John Cassidy, one of America’s leading financial journalists and a staff writer at the New Yorker, showed that the primary folly of many startup companies of that era was to believe that losing money is always a good thing, since it foretells the fortunes to come. Of course, what these naïve (and cynical) people did not realize or say is that sometimes losing money is sheer bad business, plain and simple.

Of course, one of the companies that Cassidy disparaged is Amazon, a company that not only survived its early losses but also went on to become one of the greatest technology firms of our generation and the future. As the man at the helm of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has always emphasized the long game. From early e-commerce to the cloud computing, Bezos has always maintained his focus on market share and long term benefit instead of instant profit.

This is the point that Mr. Lei also raises. He points out that Sina, Sohu, and Netease thrived after burning through cash in their early stages. It is Lei’s view that this is the unique character of the Internet era, and this is also how things will turn out in China’s e-commerce war, as whoever has the deepest pocket will be the last one standing and reap the benefit accordingly.

What Lei forgets, though, is that Amazon is the exception rather than the rule. Jeff Bezos may be the premier technologist in America. Like Steve Jobs, another technological visionary, Jeff Bezos has view of where we are headed that is both profound and nuanced.

For example, while Lei believes Amazon’s main strength is its monopolistic position in e-commerce, which allows the company to set prices higher and have higher margins, which is fundamentally different from Bezos’ vision.

The Amazon CEO believes that “there are two ways to build a successful company. One is to work very, very hard to convince customers to pay high margins. The other is to work very, very hard to be able to afford to offer customers low margins.” As such, Amazon prefers “a very large customer base and low margins than a smaller customer base and higher margins”. Therefore, Amazon’s size is an advantage because it allows the company to be more efficient instead of charge a higher price.

I don’t think Mr. Lei or any of China’s e-commerce CEOs has Bezos’ version. Therefore, even Amazon succeeded by following the “if you spend it, they will come” strategy, it may not work as well for those lacking in similar vision, value, and execution.

At this point, it should also be pointed out that Sina, Sohu, and Netease’s “spend and build” strategy almost didn’t work except for the fortuitous turn of event that saved them. Even today, some of them make most of their money as game providers instead of as news portals. Like having Bezos’ skills, this is also something you shouldn’t count on.

Related posts:

1. TaoBao to Launch the First iOS-based Chinese Digital Publication Platform
2. Tencent to Release Super B2C platform in Q4
3. Youa Spun off from Baidu to Operate Independently, Raising Tens of Millions

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Multiply Officially Moved to Indonesia, Announced new CEO

Multiply has officially announced that it has moved its corporate headquarters from Florida to Jakarta after first confirming the move back in January. At the same time, Multiply also replaced Peter Pezaris with Stefan Magdalinski as its CEO.

With 15 years of e-commerce experience, Stefan has previously managed e-commerce for MIH (a subsidiary of Naspers Group) in sub-Saharan Africa and he is the co-founder and CTO of Moo.com.

With this experience he is happy to help Multiply move forward:

I’m very excited to be working with the existing Multiply teams in Indonesia and the Philippines and become part of our new operations here. Having worked in Nigeria and Kenya recently, it’s wonderful to be operating in such developing markets as Indonesia and the Philippines. My immediate objective is to recruit and assemble a world-class local technical development team to be based with me in Jakarta, and together build the best e-commerce platform in the region, if not the world.

One huge event that Stefan will be focusing on immediately is Multiply ShopFest. Multiply Shopfest is an event by Multiply intended to add flavour to the e-commerce market here. Dubbed as the first online shopping festival in Indonesia, it will have virtual queue, super sale, sampling, product demos, and even an auction system. It will be held for two weeks and every activities will be rewarded with points which can get you everything from shopping vouchers to the new iPad for the grand prize.

Multiply has been focusing on social commerce and Indonesia is a huge target for them despite the challenges that exist for such business in the region. Multiply is heading the idEA – Indonesia e-commerce association, and we can see Multiply getting even more aggresive this year to grab an even bigger slice of the e-commerce market.

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Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing is fast coming a global mobile event

GMIC sees Dou Dou winning G-Startup and leading Internet companies share the importance of mobile platforms in Asia.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) is an annual three-day conference organized by the Great Wall Club of China. GMIC is now in its fourth year and is growing from strength to strength. The conference recorded an attendance of 5100 participants and with almost a quarter of that from international participants.

Having spoken to many participants, the general sense is the conference is one of the most well organized events in the tech sector of China. It is largely unique because of its international representation of participants as well besides the participation of a good mix of Chinese startups and large internet players.

The conference is divided into three trackes, i.e. the Main Stage keynote presentations, the G-startup track and the AppSpace track.  The Main Stage keynotes are largely invited speakers from a mixture of Chinese and international players. Notably some speakers of the Main Stage included Pony Ma, founder & CEO of Tencent, Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, and Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote.

Meanwhile the G-Startup was a startup contest that saw various international and Chinese players pitching to a panel of international judges from various investment and startup background. There was an ongoing track on various topics organized in forum format, mostly on topics related starting up.

For the AppSpace track, there were experience-sharing sessions from successful mobile Internet firms and also presentation of platforms by the  more established platform players and content aggregators.

One of the key observation points from the GMIC conference is that it is obvious that the next frontier for the Chinese Internet players are the mobile Internet and the war has already arrived. Tencent and Sina were both going all out  to show in style and might their ambitious plan to create their own mobile Internet eco-system. Their platform initiatives include publishing roles that they openly court games and content startups to work with. In one of keynote presentation, Taobao, the leading Internet auction player in China, shared that as much as 55 percent of their daily traffic comes from a mobile device now.  The message was overwhelmingly clear and loud … the mobile Internet is now as important as the Web.

On the G-Startup front, Chinese startup DouDou won the first place while Korean startup Between* won the second place. DouDou is a parents and teachers communication app that facilitate interactive communications between the parties with regards to the child’s development in school. Between* is a messaging and photo-sharing app for couples. Between* has recorded more than 750,000 users since launch and is about to test its revenue model soon. Notably both winners have simple concepts, but their products are well designed and well thought of.  The judges must have had a lot of real world experience to realize that it is mostly about execution when it comes to startups that could make it versus those that couldn’t.

In the conference venue, notably some of the international companies that had struck partnership with Chinese companies are also making their presence felt. Halfbrick, the Australia-based maker of the successful Fruit Ninja game has set its eyes on the Chinese market.  Flipboard, the magazine-styled news and social feed app has a ongoing strategy to focus its first international expansion in China. Founder and CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue was the founder and CEO of Tellme Networks, a voice portal that was sold to Microsoft for US$800 million back in 2007. It will be interesting to see where Flipboard intends to go with their simple but intuitive app.

About Kin Wai, Lau

Kin Wai is a serial entrepreneur, investor and corporate advisor.  Juggling among a few roles he actively pursues, he is currently a partner at Fatfish Medialab, a Singapore based mobile app incubator.

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Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing is fast coming a global mobile event

GMIC sees Dou Dou winning G-Startup and leading Internet companies share the importance of mobile platforms in Asia.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) is an annual three-day conference organized by the Great Wall Club of China. GMIC is now in its fourth year and is growing from strength to strength. The conference recorded an attendance of 5100 participants and with almost a quarter of that from international participants.

Having spoken to many participants, the general sense is the conference is one of the most well organized events in the tech sector of China. It is largely unique because of its international representation of participants as well besides the participation of a good mix of Chinese startups and large internet players.

The conference is divided into three trackes, i.e. the Main Stage keynote presentations, the G-startup track and the AppSpace track.  The Main Stage keynotes are largely invited speakers from a mixture of Chinese and international players. Notably some speakers of the Main Stage included Pony Ma, founder & CEO of Tencent, Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, and Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote.

Meanwhile the G-Startup was a startup contest that saw various international and Chinese players pitching to a panel of international judges from various investment and startup background. There was an ongoing track on various topics organized in forum format, mostly on topics related starting up.

For the AppSpace track, there were experience-sharing sessions from successful mobile Internet firms and also presentation of platforms by the  more established platform players and content aggregators.

One of the key observation points from the GMIC conference is that it is obvious that the next frontier for the Chinese Internet players are the mobile Internet and the war has already arrived. Tencent and Sina were both going all out  to show in style and might their ambitious plan to create their own mobile Internet eco-system. Their platform initiatives include publishing roles that they openly court games and content startups to work with. In one of keynote presentation, Taobao, the leading Internet auction player in China, shared that as much as 55 percent of their daily traffic comes from a mobile device now.  The message was overwhelmingly clear and loud … the mobile Internet is now as important as the Web.

On the G-Startup front, Chinese startup DouDou won the first place while Korean startup Between* won the second place. DouDou is a parents and teachers communication app that facilitate interactive communications between the parties with regards to the child’s development in school. Between* is a messaging and photo-sharing app for couples. Between* has recorded more than 750,000 users since launch and is about to test its revenue model soon. Notably both winners have simple concepts, but their products are well designed and well thought of.  The judges must have had a lot of real world experience to realize that it is mostly about execution when it comes to startups that could make it versus those that couldn’t.

In the conference venue, notably some of the international companies that had struck partnership with Chinese companies are also making their presence felt. Halfbrick, the Australia-based maker of the successful Fruit Ninja game has set its eyes on the Chinese market.  Flipboard, the magazine-styled news and social feed app has a ongoing strategy to focus its first international expansion in China. Founder and CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue was the founder and CEO of Tellme Networks, a voice portal that was sold to Microsoft for US$800 million back in 2007. It will be interesting to see where Flipboard intends to go with their simple but intuitive app.

About Kin Wai, Lau

Kin Wai is a serial entrepreneur, investor and corporate advisor.  Juggling among a few roles he actively pursues, he is currently a partner at Fatfish Medialab, a Singapore based mobile app incubator.

Link to full article

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GREE’s Zombie Jombie Surpasses 1 Million Downloads

Even with all the craziness surrounding ‘kompu gacha’ for Japan’s biggest social gaming companies, their businesses still keep chugging along. And one of the biggest players, GREE (TYO:3632), has hit a milestone with the first game produced by its North American studio, Zombie Jombie. The folks over at Gamebiz.jp have reported that the title has surpassed one million downloads in App Store.

We got in touch with GREE representatives and received confirmation that the game has indeed surpassed the one million downloads mark. We’re also told that Zombie Jombie was selected as one of Apple’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ games, and is in the top 10 grossing apps list for the US app store.

I was initially skeptical that a card-based title would do very well in the U.S. as that has been a genre that had really only proven itself for GREE in its home market. But a million downloads in two months is certainly a decent start for the game, I think.

If you’d like to give it a try for yourself, you can get it from the App Store. There’s a great walk-through of the game by YouTube user TheCodGamer2010 below as well.

On a somewhat related note, Rage of Bahamut from DeNA and Cygames hit number one of Google Play’s top grossing charts just last month. We’ve been seeing a lot of enthusiastic comments from readers about this one as well. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out our own review of Rage of Bahamut.

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Mastercard says Asian countries are ready for mobile payments

Photo: wordsinspace.net

Mastercard’s latest survey on the global mobile payment landscape reveals trends that Asian consumers are open to mobile payments.

Mobile payment is gaining popularity for both consumers and businesses. On the one hand, tech companies are coming up with interesting payment gadgets and technology such as Square, Paypal Here and Near Field Communication (NFC) to facilitate better and ‘safer’ transactions on the mobile gateway. On the other hand, mobile customers are beginning to open up to the new idea of transactions on-the-go.

Mastercard did a recent survey on the global mobile payment landscape and revealed surprising findings on mobile payment readiness in 34 countries. (source: Mastercard)

Using six metrics: consumer readiness, environment, financial services, infrastructure, mobile commerce cluster and regulation, Mastercard has come up a Mobile Payment Readiness Index (MPRI) that measures the level of readiness for mobile payment adoption on a scale of 1 to 100 in each country. The data is also a cumulation of factors based on person to person (P2P), mobile e-commerce (mCommerce), and mobile payments at the point of sale (POS).

Photo: Mastercard

Surprisingly, Singapore tops the list for  being the most ready  country in consumer acceptance of mobile payment with an MPRI of 45.6. Following closely behind is Canada and the United States with 42.0 and 41.4 respectively.

Consumer readiness. Kenya tops the other 33 countries in terms of existing consumer readiness towards the adoption of mobile. Due to popularity of P2P services, 89% of Kenyans are familiar with mobile payments and 68% of them make mobile P2P transactions frequently.

Environment. In the environment component, the United States leads the rest with as a result of high household expenditure per capita of around $33,000 as compared to the Index average of approximately $11,000. Other countries that scored well include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France and Canada.

Financial services. Given Japan’s well-developed finance sector, the country leads the financial component. Statistics also reveal that the average Japanese holds 15 payment cards.

Infrastructures. Singapore leads this component with a mobile penetration index that is higher than the average at 100% of the population covered by a mobile network. Following closely behind is China, with the highest number of mobile phones of any country in the index at a total of 859,000,000 mobile phone subscriptions.

Mobile commerce cluster. With great collaboration with banks, mobile networks and the government, Canada is in the lead for this component. Japan follows closely behind.

Regulation. Well known for her efficient regulatory system, Singapore tops the other countries in the Regulation Component. Singapore’s high score rated at 84 out of 100 is a result of the cumulative effects of its well-developed laws relating to ICT.

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Mastercard says Asian countries are ready for mobile payments

Photo: wordsinspace.net

Mastercard’s latest survey on the global mobile payment landscape reveals trends that Asian consumers are open to mobile payments.

Mobile payment is gaining popularity for both consumers and businesses. On the one hand, tech companies are coming up with interesting payment gadgets and technology such as Square, Paypal Here and Near Field Communication (NFC) to facilitate better and ‘safer’ transactions on the mobile gateway. On the other hand, mobile customers are beginning to open up to the new idea of transactions on-the-go.

Mastercard did a recent survey on the global mobile payment landscape and revealed surprising findings on mobile payment readiness in 34 countries. (source: Mastercard)

Using six metrics: consumer readiness, environment, financial services, infrastructure, mobile commerce cluster and regulation, Mastercard has come up a Mobile Payment Readiness Index (MPRI) that measures the level of readiness for mobile payment adoption on a scale of 1 to 100 in each country. The data is also a cumulation of factors based on person to person (P2P), mobile e-commerce (mCommerce), and mobile payments at the point of sale (POS).

Photo: Mastercard

Surprisingly, Singapore tops the list for  being the most ready  country in consumer acceptance of mobile payment with an MPRI of 45.6. Following closely behind is Canada and the United States with 42.0 and 41.4 respectively.

Consumer readiness. Kenya tops the other 33 countries in terms of existing consumer readiness towards the adoption of mobile. Due to popularity of P2P services, 89% of Kenyans are familiar with mobile payments and 68% of them make mobile P2P transactions frequently.

Environment. In the environment component, the United States leads the rest with as a result of high household expenditure per capita of around $33,000 as compared to the Index average of approximately $11,000. Other countries that scored well include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France and Canada.

Financial services. Given Japan’s well-developed finance sector, the country leads the financial component. Statistics also reveal that the average Japanese holds 15 payment cards.

Infrastructures. Singapore leads this component with a mobile penetration index that is higher than the average at 100% of the population covered by a mobile network. Following closely behind is China, with the highest number of mobile phones of any country in the index at a total of 859,000,000 mobile phone subscriptions.

Mobile commerce cluster. With great collaboration with banks, mobile networks and the government, Canada is in the lead for this component. Japan follows closely behind.

Regulation. Well known for her efficient regulatory system, Singapore tops the other countries in the Regulation Component. Singapore’s high score rated at 84 out of 100 is a result of the cumulative effects of its well-developed laws relating to ICT.

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