MasterCard will launch its digital wallet later this year, a mobile payment system designed to speed consumer purchases online or via mobile apps.
PayPass Wallet Services — is an attempt to expand it to online stores and mobile phone users. The service will actually make it to Australia in the 3rd of this year.
“Merchants want flexibility to easily accept digital payments so they can convert more browsers to buyers,” says Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer of MasterCard. “PayPass Wallet Services simplifies the shopping experience.”
Like Amazon’s one-click shopping feature, MasterCard will encourage customers to store their card information in the digital wallet app and avoid having to enter detailed shipping and card information with each purchase. Consumers can use any branded credit, debit and prepaid cards.
Merchants who accept the digital wallet will display a PayPass payment icon on their websites.
MasterCard plans to allow banks, merchants and other partners to use its technology to create their own digital wallets. It will also distribute developer tools to allow other digital wallets to connect to the PayPass acceptance network, allowing their customers to make purchases online or in stores that accept PayPass.
Adding to the great news from Amaysim overnight, Virgin Mobile have snuck in with some news of their own. Rather than charge you .2c a kilobyte (effectively $2/MB) for any excess data that you use with your PostPaid plan, they will now charge you only 20.5c/MB, charged per kilobyte.
This also applies to the BYO range which has no contract just a month to month arrangement.
This is what their website said about the change:
We’ve certainly heard all your feedback on excess data and are pleased to be able to announce that from the 1st of May, we reduced our excess data rate for postpaid mobile customers to 20.5c/MB (billed per kb). This is just one of a raft of changes Virgin Mobile is introducing to assist our customers in managing their data consumption.
Virgin Mobile is reducing its excess data rates on postpaid plans to 20.5c/MB, one of the lowest rates in the market. We acknowledge that excess data can be really stressful and as a result we think it’s only fair to lower our excess data rates to reflect the increasing use of smartphones in Australia. Fifty-two per-cent of us now have smartphones; that’s one of the highest penetrations of smartphones in the world. Virgin Mobile customers should be able to use their handsets to their full potential and, with ever increasing smartphone usage in Australia we think this change will make it easier for people to get the most out of their phone.
Amaysim released some good news yesterday, announcing that they had reduced the per minute call rate on their Pay As You Go prepaid mobile plan from 15c/min (no flagfall) to just 12c per min (no flagfall). This a pretty huge saving and relatively unheard of in Australia, ie call rates actually being reduced not increased.
Hats off the Amaysim. The Pay As You Go prepaid mobile plan comes with no flagfall, 12c SMS, 5c/MB data, unlimited social media access and 90 days to use it. It is actually one of the more popular prepaid mobile plans in the market at the moment.
Coles Mobile is currently available at the following stores:
Coles Mobile stores
- Bendigo Central (Vic)
- Berwick (Vic)
- Berwick North (Vic)
- Burwood East (Vic)
- Brandon Park (Vic)
- Brunswick (Vic)
- Caroline Springs (Vic)
- Chadstone (Vic)
- Coburg (Vic)
- Knox (Vic)
- Lynbrook (Vic)
- Melton West (Vic)
- Oakleigh (Vic)
- South Melbourne (Vic)
- Taylors Hill (Vic)
- Shellharbour (NSW)
Coles Mobile offers you access to contract mobile plans, prepaid mobile sim and prepaid mobile broadband starter kits. You can also learn more about Coles Mobile online.
Here are some quick tips in determining how much data you will be using when browsing the net using your iPad, laptop or mobile phone.
- Email (text only) = 50 KB
- Email (w/attach.) = 4 MB
- Web page browsing = 400 KB
- Music streaming = 1 MB per minute
- Video streaming (Standard def) = 7 MB per minute
- Photo download/upload (Hi-Res) = 4 MB
- Music download and upload = 6 MB per music file
- 3G VoIP = 1 MB per minute
- 3G VoIP with Video = 8 MB per minute
- Online gaming = 150 MB per hour
Below are a couple of online calculators that can assist you to work out just how much data you use each week.
