Street Fight Daily: Mastercard’s Wearable Future, Apple Eyes Path
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
MasterCard CMO Talks Brand Transition From Credit Cards to Wearables (AdAge)
The way people pay for stuff is changing, and as consumers branch out beyond cash and credit, financial-services firms like MasterCard want to make sure they’re provide the options. The company plans to use its Priceless loyalty offering to develop new ways to pay — and disseminate data along the way.
Apple’s Big Day: Here’s Everything That Matters for Hyperlocal (Street Fight)
As expected, Apple introduced the iPhone 6 (and the iPhone 6 Plus), the Apple Watch and a new payments system called Apple Pay. Here’s a breakdown of the major announcements and what they could mean for local-minded entrepreneurs.
Source: Apple Set to Acquire Path in an Attempt to Bolster iOS Social Cred (Pando)
According to a single well-placed source inside Apple’s engineering team, the company is poised to announce an acquisition of Dave Morin’s Path social network. The deal has not been announced yet, but according to our source, “it’s almost done, if not signed already, but it’s essentially a done deal.”
Ecommerce Retailer Indochino Ventures into Brick-and-Mortar (Street Fight)
Indochino, the apparel brand that made its name selling custom suits online, opens its first permanent retail showroom in New York today in a move that builds on a series of pop-up shops which the apparel maker has hosted in cities across the country for the past few years. It’s just the latest in a series of ecommerce firms to invest in brick-and-mortar retail.
Apple Made Its Move into Payments — Here’s What’s Next (Street Fight)
Apple announced its long-awaited payments product on Tuesday, opening the door for a range of new innovations in local tech. Here are four locally focused companies that have already started working on products to dovetail with the platform.
Mobile Retail Passes the 50% Point, Tops Desktop (MediaPost)
Mobile is finally beating the desktop for shopping at retailer websites. For the first time, more than half of visits to retailers’ websites came from mobile devices, according to a new report. It’s not just the mobile visits that continue to increase, with smartphone commerce activity increasing across the board.
How Apple Pay Will Destroy the Online-Offline Shopping Divide (Wired)
“Apple Pay will still be many years before mobile payments reach critical mass,” says Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research. But if Apple Pay is successful, it will change the way we buy in more ways than you might expect. It will meld online buying and offline buying into one.
Eventbrite’s Kevin And Julia Hartz Don’t Want To Go Public Just Yet (TechCrunch)
Eventbrite currently tops up at nearly $200 million in funding from 10 rounds, the latest raise was a $60 million raise in private equity. “I’m just not thrilled with the amount of bureaucracy a company has to go through,” one half of the husband and wife Eventbrite founding team Kevin Hartz said about doing an IPO.
How Amazon’s Local Register Could Tip the Balance Back to Brick-and-Mortar (VentureBeat)
Robert McCarthy: Amazon’s Local Register announcement last month could be considered yet another player being added to an already (over)crowded market led by the likes of Square and PayPal. But Amazon is in a unique position to not only deliver a successful mobile payment solution but to change the game for brick-and-mortar retailers and their customers.
Whole Foods Increases Grocery-Shopping Convenience With 1-hour Delivery (Mobile Commerce Daily)
Whole Foods Market is making grocery shopping more convenient by allowing customers in 15 United States cities to use a mobile application to have groceries delivered to their door within an hour in a move into the growing mobile grocery-delivery space.
These Men May Revolutionize How You Shop. There’s a Reason They’re All Chinese (Quartz)
Imagine Donald Trump, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Larry Page unveiling a new, $814 million e-commerce platform to rival Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. Then imagine it involves customers buying goods on their smartphones but collecting them in person, that same day, from Walmart.
Demise of the Click? Store Visit Metrics Extended to Desktop Ads (Screenwerk)
Location-analytics provider Placed and Dstillery announced a partnership “to deliver cross-channel measurement solutions for brands.” In a test, smartphone owners who visited the retailer’s locations were tied back to PC ad exposures using Dstillery’s “CrossWalk multi-device technology.”
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