Tag: Mobile Apps
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Design The Future – The New InfoStretch Video
InfoStretch Is Helping To Design The Future In The Mobile Connected World…Check Our Latest Video !
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Digital Banking – A Whole New World!
Revolutions Are The Locomotives Of History
– Karl MarxWhen was the last you visited a bank?
When was the last you withdrew cash at the bank counter?Even if that was not very long ago, I bet that the frequency of these visits is not the same as before.
Money is a high trust and high emotion area. People prefer security over everything else. Hence consumers continue to bank with large traditional banks. This trust has resulted in banking being a complex and ambiguous and highly profitable industry!
But the banking industry as we know is ready for disruption. The digital revolution is set to change the game in banking landscape. Digital Banks are all set to become the new challengers.
Digital Banking is a whole new way of banking. They are thinking differently – thinking the same way as the Uber-Instagram-Whatsapp style startups. They offer pure play banking services through mobile apps and digital channels only – no branches. They do have call-centres. They do not have legacy thinking, infrastructure or even legacy issues.
Digital Banks have a fertile ground because of various factors:
1. The New Generation users have a disconnect with traditional banking models. Their relationship with money is driven by different motivations as compared to earlier generations. They want to deal with a bank that speaks their language and understands their mindset.
2. The Mobile Generation wants the best of technology in all walks of life and banking is no different. They will want to transfer the funds with same ease as sharing an Instagram snap.
3. The New Generation is comfortable with trusting Apps for money. The m-Commerce and e-Commerce experience have given the confidence to try Digital Banking models.
4. Pure play and on-demand services are the mantra in digital economy. Traditional banks try to cross-sell and push multiple products. Millennials want pure-play banking and Digital Banks will fill that need.
Digital banks are leveraging the best of technology to create competitive advantage. Offering real time intelligence – analysis of money spent or affordability of that new car ! Giving ideas to save money. Atom Bank plans to use 3D visualisations and gaming technology for its app, and plans to integrate cutting edge biometric security. Digital Banks can also offer personalisation. Of course, all of these value-adds can be copied by traditional banking giants.
UK already has seen the launch of Digital Banks – Atom Bank, Starling Bank, Tandem, Mondo etc. Lunar Way has been launched in Norway.
Interesting Times…Another industry faces the digital challenge ! Expect High-Street Banks to learn from these banks. Also acquire these new banks. In any case, the banking industry is ripe for a paradigm shift !
Image Credit: KHRawlings
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HCE – Why Does This Disruptive NextGen Technology Matter?
Host Card Emulation (HCE) is topic of season in the contactless world. It is an disruptive technology which promises to open up new business cases and challenge the incumbent Secure Element (SE) technology. It is redefining mobile payment, access control and identification use-cases.
Host Card Emulation is an enabler technology, which allows NFC enabled mobile device to emulate any contactless smart card and store the secure data remotely on the cloud. Traditionally the user data was only stored inside a mobile device, popularly known as Secure Element Platforms.
HCE allows users to just tap their mobile devices on the terminals to initiate transactions with an app of their choice. HCE will allow Telcos and Banks to quickly launch contactless mobile services.
HCE is a game-changer due to the following reasons:
Quick Launch To Market: HCE is a software based solution and hence quicker to launch and market. The hardware based solution – Secure Element – is a time consuming process as the roll-out is dependent on ensuring SE on Mobile SIM card or embedded Secure Element.
Cost-Effective: HCE wallets are like any other apps. So there is no cost of special devices with secure element or additional memory cards or fobs. It is cheaper for banks and other service providers to launch these wallets.
Versatile: HCE Apps can be versatile. It can be used for various services including Payments, tokens/loyalty programs, access control, transit ticketing, and other value added services alike.
Secure: Tokenisation and key rotation ensure the HCE solutions are secure. More work is being done to ensure higher security levels. HCE is a new technology and it will get better with each season.
Industry-Support: Visa and MasterCard support HCE. It is a big endorsement. The HCE support comes pre-packaged in Android Kitkat OS. Blackberry was the first OS to support HCE. HCE works with NFC enabled devices.
The HCE ecosystem ensures easy implementation, quick scalability and fast roll-outs. Indeed the steps in the right direction for the mobile payment industry. The best part is the opening up of new use-cases and business scenarios that are so vital for the cloud-driven mobile-first digital lives.
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Is The Mobile Web Vs Native App Debate Over?
Mobile Web Vs Native App – One of the most interesting debate in the recent times ! However, gradually, it seems that Mobile Native App has proven to be an preferred choice by both consumers and enterprise mobility technologists.
Venture Beat declared that the mobile war is over and the app has won: 80% of mobile time spent in apps. According to app analytics firm Flurry, which tracks app usage on a staggering 300,000 apps on over a billion active mobile devices, Americans spent an average of 158 minutes each and every day on smartphones and tablets. Two hours and seven minutes of that is in an app, and only 31 minutes is in a browser, surfing the old-school web
Native Apps offer rich User Experience, intuitive features, integration with multiple systems and stronger encryption for Enterprise Companies.
Leading retail companies prefer Native Apps over Mobile Web to drive special promotions and deals, give product information, leverage loyalty programs also provide added features such as games and interactive tools related to their brands.
Interestingly HTML5 is a useful tool for creating Hybrid Mobile Apps.
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Mobile Ticketing Experience Needs Improvement !
Working on weekends and holidays has implications for marital bliss. I tried to compensate via movie tickets for the latest flick.
Since I was away from the office and at client location, I decided to use mobile ticket booking apps. My first choice was BookMyShow App. The start was very quick – dates selected, movie selected, theatre selected, tickets chosen…but oh oh…Try again ! It happened for 3-4 times. Patience is a virtue, but not always.
Let me try the PVR App. It was trying to auto-detect my location. It tried and it tried and it tried. I was wondering why did it not have an option for me to input my location manually.
Mobile Maven Kinjan was with me. He tried to download a multi-booking app on Blackberry App World. He got weird results when he typed Book My Show. I tried Cinemax App. All were same !
Finally, I gave up ! We had spent more than 45 minutes on this exercise. It had also partly to do with our own bias and secret hope that some Mobile App would work. You always believe in the medicine you preach – mobile nirvana !
I went to the theatre on the way back to home. Got my tickets booked in 90 seconds via the good old box office counter!
There were many culprits – badly designed apps, faulty logic, failure in back-end theatre connectivity, unreliable 3G Networks, discovery of new apps, failure of thinking customer experience etc. Think like the end user when designing the app – remove our internal bias – and the magical Instagram and Flipboard like app would there! And would create more smiles !
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InfoStretch Named Among Top 75 Workplaces in the Silicon Valley
InfoStretch, a leading provider of enterprise QA and mobile solutions is named among the top 75 workplaces in the Silicon Valley by the Bay Area News Group. It ranks #27 in the mid-sized company category. Previously, InfoStretch has been recognized among the hottest companies in Silicon Valley by 411, was among top 20 fastest growing companies by Silicon Valley Fast Private, and was named as top 1000 in the Inc. 500|5000 list of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.
InfoStretch has seen some phenomenal growth in the last couple of years, both in terms of new client acquisition and organic growth within the current customer base. Very recently, InfoStretch signed up its 100th customer, a milestone which came out of dedicated efforts from various teams and company’s vision and leadership. “We are on the path to take InfoStretch to the next level, and getting this award is good recognition for our strategy,” says Rutesh Shah, President and CEO at InfoStretch Corporation. “I firmly believe that happy employees bring growth and success for the company and our goal at InfoStretch is to ensure that all our employees are happy,” he added.
InfoStretch’s HR and recruitment team has been instrumental in achieving this goal. “Our job here is to recruit top talent and to give the best to our employees, so that they thrive,” says Rhonda Wallace, HR Manager at InfoStretch. “Whether it is better benefits and attractive retirement plans, or community services and family picnics, we make sure to cover all bases to create a positive company culture,” she added.
Visit InfoStretch awards page to learn about our success, our careers page to see the current job openings, and our clients page to see what they’re saying about us.
About InfoStretch Corporation
InfoStretch is a leading provider of mobile and enterprise QA services and solutions. Our offerings range from enterprise QA, mobile application development, testing, and automation to certification and sustenance. We’ve been providing expert solutions and services to various large and strategic players in the mobile ecosystem including enterprises, carriers, app stores, VAS, and ISV’s to actualize their mobile and QA strategy very successfully.
We offer the most cost effective, secure, and scalable models to service our clients across various verticals such as banking, healthcare, education, and entertainment to name a few. Our innovations have allowed us to provide an SLA of 24hours and the ability to scale and test over 2,000 apps a day.
