Mobile Payment Solution...

With increasing smartphone adoption and with users in turn becoming more and more comfortable using their mobile devices to do things traditionally reserved for the Web or desktops, every industry is going mobile. But, when you consider the affect mobile technology has still yet to make on transactions — ye olde exchange of money/goods — there is a huge opportunity for disruption. Carriers, OEMs, startups — everyone knows this. Three, five years from now, mobile payment solutions has the potential to be a massive business. Yet, as things stand right now, carriers and mobile OSes are still finding it hard to come to terms , with users suffering as a result. That’s why SCVNGR decided to spin-off (and subsequently focus more resources) on LevelUp , a mobile payment and rewards network, which it launched into beta in July 2011. The mobile payments networks has been growing fast, SCVNGR and LevelUp Founder Seth Priebatsch tells us, as it now counts over 100,000 users and has partnered with 1,400 merchants in Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago. First and foremost, the problem LevelUp is really trying to solve is offering a way for users to bypass NFC or having certain cards to pay for their goods. Now on iPhone, Android, mobile web, and good old physical card form, users simply use the apps to register their most-used credit card or debit card on LevelUp. From there, they get their own unique QR code, which they can simply scan at one of those 1,400 locations. The transaction is completed, and they’re emailed a receipt. Simple enough, right? But the real key to success in the mobile payments game is scale. It’s about offering a solution that is carrier and credit card-agnostic. ISIS has the clout of all the major carriers and credit card companies , but it’s really not going to get rolling until 2013. In the meantime, there’s plenty of room for existing (and newcoming) players to shake things up. So, Priebatsch says that he wants LevelUp to do away with the limitations imposed on mobile payments solutions by those typical niche requirements, so that anyone with a web-connected device can show up at their favorite merchants and pay. LevelUp is already seeing some good engagement with its app, considering the fact that $1 million in transactions took place through its system for all of 2011, but it is now seeing its users spend over $1 million at local businesses per month , and engagement has been doubling every 5 to 6 weeks, according to Priebatsch. On top of that, LevelUp is announcing today that it is releasing a beta API, which will hopefully allow developers to accept LevelUp payments from third party software or POS platforms. The CEO said that the company already has about 10 companies working to integrate LevelUp into their POS solutions, and the first integrations will be announced soon. ( Developers can sign up here .) This is all well and good, but most would probably agree that NFC is the future for mobile payments. So where’s LevelUp’s NFC integration, you ask? With a solution that focuses mainly on a QR code reader, one might think that LevelUp believes QR codes are going to beat NFC in the end. Priebatsch says it’s quite the contrary, but that it’s going to take several more years for NFC to hit the tipping point. And what’s more, he doesn’t think the specific technology you use matters to the end-user, NFC, QR Code, ultrasonic — it’s about offering a solution that the majority of people can use, with the majority of credit cards, and building value on top of that agnostic platform. That being said, the LevelUp CEO says that the next generation of LevelUp docks (the hardware merchants use in their stores) already have NFC support. “We’re ready for NFC, it’s just going to take a while before any consumer can use it,” he said. He thinks it’s this kind of preparation for the consumer’s technology choice du jour that will allow them to be competitive in the long-run, in what is certainly shaping up to be a crowded space. When you look broadly at mobile payment technologies, you have PayPal, Square, Amex Serve, Visa PayWave, Master Card PayPass, Starbucks, Google Wallet, Dwolla — all in various ways building solutions around certain aspects of the mobile transactions. The definition for “mobile payment technology” tends to be broadly applied, but Priebatsch says that, if one defines mobile payments as those solutions which actually let you use your phone to pay for a good or service in a physical location, then LevelUp has become the second largest player in the space. Measured by active users and dollar volume, of which LevelUp is now seeing $1 million per month, that puts them in second behind only Starbucks. But Starbucks probably won’t be applying their technology, to say, Peet’s Coffee. And, of course, there’s Square, which has a much broader reach and adoption, but its flagship product is a mobile card reader for merchants. It still involves a swipe, whereas Square’s Card Case app more directly competes with what LevelUp is doing, although it’s still early on its development. It’s a big claim to make, but LevelUp thinks that its early traction justifies the optimism. Bringing on 400 new merchants in February, partnerships with Ben & Jerry’s, Quizno’s, and hardware and infrastructure provided by T-Mobile doesn’t hurt. It led to the startup adding 400 new merchants in February. There’s a lot left to be said for the mobile payments space, but certainly one that erases the friction inherent to fragmentation of carriers and credit card companies and just allows a simple phone scan, could be huge. But it has to hit scale fast, before Square, Isis and others really get rolling. For more, check out LevelUp at home here .

Secret Escapes Attracts...

Secret Escapes , the exclusive flash sales for luxury hotel rooms along the lines of and Voyage Privé in France and Gilt Group in the US, is announcing a second funding round, although they are being coy about the level. Suffice to say this is a site which is pretty much ‘coining it’ amongst users, having attracted 750,000 active users since January this year and claims to be doubling turnover every three months. Tom Valentine, MD of Secret Escapes declined to give a figure for the new funding but said its “supporting major new marketing initiatives” to the tune of £5 million in 2012, so I think it’s safe to expect some TV advertising.

Venturocket Launches An...

It may not be receiving quite as much media coverage as the VMAs at the moment, but we’re all acutely aware of the fact that the economy remains in the toilet. Unemployment is still over 9 percent , and articles like this one detail just how long it takes for the average American to find a job — and that job seekers are giving up on the search after as little as 5 months. Of course, part of the problem is there just aren’t enough jobs being created, but it’s also true that the present state of job sites and marketplaces today leaves a lot to be desired. Venturocket , a job connection service based out of San Francisco, is today launching a new spin on the old model that it hopes will prove to be a more effective way to match job seekers to the right employers. With an AdWords nod, to boot. For starters, Venturocket Founder and CEO Marc Hoag says that he wants his service to dismantle the old job search standards and rebuild the model from the ground up. For Hoag, this means no more resumes, no more cover letters, and a dearth of classified ads. Out with the old, in with the new. Venturocket also does away with listing charges and membership fees — for both job seekers and employers — the startup instead only charges a small fee when an actual connection is made, i.e. the job seeker gets called in for an actual interview. As an alternative to resumes and applications, the service requires prospective employees to list their skills and proficiencies in those skills — by selecting them from a common pool of choices, removing the interference of duplications and picky search filters. But here’s where Venturocket’s model sets it apart from the rest: Job seekers actually bid on the keywords that describe their level of expertise at a particular job or skill, so that you’re in very real terms, putting your money where your mouth is. Are you an expert developer? Well, then you might say that you’re worth $20, and prospective employers pay that price to speak with you, and you pay that price in return. Essentially, Venturocket is bringing the same model Google’s AdWords uses to determine the payment structure for its ads to the job search process. It’s a different (and perhaps slightly higher method) of determining the cost-per-connection, but Hoag says that he thinks that, by having providers and seekers pay the same nominal fee, it will ensure that both parties are genuinely interested in one another — and that a connection will be made. A quality connection. Otherwise, the service is open to jobs in every sector, and is free to join, search, and use for job postings. Job skills are easily sorted and selected, serving results from commonly-used listings and related fields. Venturocket wants to eliminate your having to spam hundreds of job posts and employers with your resume and a hastily written cover letter, by allowing employers to pick only from candidates with the best skill matches, leaving job seekers to relax in knowing that they will automatically be contacted by companies — that they don’t have to waste time drafting a saccharine cover letter or prepare a professional headshot. Now, some may be put off by the fact that you have to spend money to bid for the top keywords, but as Hoag pointed out, there is generally a misconception that it’s wrong or not feasible to spend money as part of the job search. In reality, people spend a lot of money looking for work, and with Venturocket’s model, you only pay for the skills that best describe your level of expertise — and the employer pays the same to get in touch with you. Hoag said that he realizes this model may not be appealing to the top 2.5 percent of job seekers, but the other 97.5 percent of people are the ones that really need the help. Now, of course, as to the price of keywords, Adwords’ model runs the gamut from $1 to $100, and just as for Venturocket, the price of keywords is going to be determined by competition. So there’s a chance certain titles are driven up, but Hoag says that, like Adwords, he expects the average price to be far lower — under $2. One might also think that this model would find people adding hundreds of keywords to describe their levels of expertise, but Hoag says that he wants to limit these to manageable numbers to incentivize completion, so employees can enter up to 30 keywords, while employers can add up to 15. Venturocket is testing an interesting solution with its new service, and it will be really interesting to see if the Adwords model tests well in the job marketplace. The idea has some real validity to it, but can people really become comfortable with a service that circumvents the traditional job assets like resumes and cover letters and replaces them with keyword bidding? Chime in and let us know what you think. For more on Venturocket, check ‘em out here . Crunchbase VENTUROCKET Company: VENTUROCKET Website: http://www.venturocket.com Launch Date: 6/1/2011 Venturocket is a marketplace where job seekers bid on their skills to compete for job opportunities and employers cherry-pick the very best talent. The price job seekers bid reflects... Learn more

Slovenia Launches Super...

The threat of corruption is ever-present in areas like government spending, where miles of red tape, billions in assets, and a legitimate need for secrecy at times presents a potential trifecta for would-be defrauders. Slovenia, only a few notches lower than the of course upstanding USA on 2010′s corruption perceptions index , is no nest of vipers, but as a country in transition from communism, their risk is perhaps greater. But the set of data is smaller, more manageable — which makes unified and transparent for monitoring of government spending more feasible. The country’s Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has just launched such a tool, called Supervizor , and it’s live right now if you don’t mind operating it in Slovenian. The display of information is quite slick, as you can see, and intended for public consumption: Compared to, say, the US Patent Office website, which I’ve been navigating frequently of late, it’s a breath of fresh air — though the two are not strictly speaking in the same category. The data right now goes back to 2003, just before Slovenia joined the EU, likely coinciding with an improvement and increase in bookkeeping for that particular transition. It’s from public sources like the Ministry of Finance and Public Payments Administration, and the Committee is careful to say that it takes no responsibility for their accuracy. A strange appendix to a service where accuracy and responsibility are paramount, one is tempted to remark, but the sad truth is that numbers like this are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and in a bureaucracy (and all governments are bureaucracies to some extent) there are many, many links. All the same, the information is not hiding in endless monospace text files linked from obscure ministry sub-pages. This is about access and transparency, things which ideally might lead to accountability but are not necessarily its companions. It’s also tempting to say that something like this can’t be scaled. Surely enough, scaling won’t be easy, but then again, if you tried to describe the databases being managed by Facebook right now to a sysop or designer from five or ten years ago, they’d probably say they couldn’t scale what they had either. We’re still some distance from being able to track spending at quite this level of granularity, and with this level of accessibility, but there are plenty of projects that aim to do just that. Try entering a search term at the bottom of the main page . I found that putting the initials of their political parties seems to work, but for example “vojaški” (“military”) doesn’t. Kudos to the engineers and designers who put Supervizor together; I hope we’ll see more of this kind of transparency from other governments and companies. Update : I really should have included a link to USAspending.gov , which does substantially similar tracking of federal grants and contracts (though not state or city). I should admit that I didn’t think the US’s site would be as solid as it is, though I don’t think it provides as great of detail as Supervizor. Mea culpa, but at least it’s good news. [via Funky Karaoke and Hacker News ]

CarabinerKey Is Part Ca...

You might remember the Split Ring Key , a clever twist on the keyring by designer Scott Amron that let you hang your keys on another key. The split-ring design, however, made it a chore to add and remove keys. Solution? Put a hinge on that sucker and ta-da: the CarabinerKey . Seems like a handy addition to your keychain — might even simplify things a bit. The site says you can order them, but I’m guessing they’re not quite to the level of retail availability. Price isn’t set, but the old keys were $8, so I’d guess these would be a bit more due to the multi-part manufacturing. $10 maybe? Whenever they’re ready to ship out, you’ll find them at Keybrid or CarabinerKeys .