Mobile Web Surfers Soar As Payments Players Rev up M-Commerce

Just as U.S. banks and merchants rev up plans for mobile commerce, U.S. mobile phone users are accessing the mobile Web more than ever, with a particularly strong spurt of growth in usage over the past year. Some 21% of worldwide links to the mobile Internet through a platform operated by Bango.net Ltd., a U.K. provider of mobile Web technology, came from the U.S. in April, up threefold from a year earlier, Bango says in a report released Tuesday. That's enough to rank second in the world to the U.K., which claimed 27% of mobile logons to the Internet. Payment processors, banks, and merchants have started taking early steps toward enabling m-commerce through mobile sites. Last week, Google Checkout announced on its blog that it is now supporting transactions for Checkout merchants with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) sites, or sites that are tailored for the mobile Web. Merchants that adopt Checkout will get the mobile capability automatically. The company's offer of free processing until the end of the year applies to mobile transactions, a Google spokesman tells Digital Transactions News. “What we're seeing through these [Bango] numbers is a transformation of the Internet from something connected to a desktop to something mobile,” said Anil Malhotra, senior vice president of marketing at Bango, in a statement. The company attributes much of the U.S. increase in mobile Web browsing to handset users' increasing reliance on mobile search to seek out content and services. Pricing plans, Bango says, play a key role. “We see that wherever flat-rate data charges are pervasive in a country, then there's much more Web browsing,” Malhotra said. “We expect to see more competitively priced flat-rate data plans in the U.S., which will stimulate further Web browsing.” The handset accounting for the most Web access in the first quarter was the Sanyo Katana SCP 6600, which Bango says is available only in the U.S. The Motorola V360, the Sony Ericsson K750i, and the Samsung A900 also accounted for a significant share of surfing, said the company, which detects log-ons from 190 countries. Bango's platform helps companies drive traffic to mobile Web sites, track marketing results, and collect payments for digital content.