Short Message Service (SMS) or text messaging has come a long way since Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert first proposed the concept in 1984. Now, according to the Pew Research Center (PRC), texting is the most widely and frequently employed application on a smartphone, with 97 percent of Americans using it at least once a day. Some 23 billion messages per day, or almost 16 million messages per minute, crisscross the globe, about 26 percent, or 6 billion, of which are in the U.S. Singlepoint, Inc. (OTC: SING) is gearing up to capitalize on that ubiquity with its Pay-by-Text™ technology.
This Australian University of Technology Sydney website (http://nnw.fm/pYqH8) outlines some of the virtues of text messaging. Even the simplest of phones can handle the technology, because it was designed to work with early telephony systems. It was the first communications technology to offer guaranteed delivery. If a recipient is switched off, out of range or if there is a network outage, the SMS message will be stored in the network and delivered when the recipient announces its presence, or when the outage is rectified. SMS can be sent or received during voice or data calls since it makes use of a separate channel, which is normally used for transfer of control messaging to transfer its packets. Furthermore, the low-bandwidth required to transmit short alphanumeric strings allows messaging worldwide with very low latency.
OneReach (http://nnw.fm/GKO7a) sets out the many other advantages of SMS. It is widely accepted, with 96 percent of smartphone owners using text. And some 98 percent of text messages are opened by the recipient as opposed to the 20 percent open rate of email. Text messaging has a 45 percent response rate, while email only has a 6 percent response rate. 55 percent of heavy text message users (50+ texts per day) say they would prefer to receive a text rather than a phone call. (In 2011, the PRC found that 31 percent of Americans preferred text messages to phone calls.) And it takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to email, but only 90 seconds to respond to a text message. Text, it seems, is the new lingua franca of our communications technological age.
The Pay-by-Text™ technology by Singlepoint appears to have garnered the best features of both worlds. It makes payment transactions immeasurably easier, and it allows communications in the pithy ‘sound bite’ size appreciated by busy people.
Singlepoint’s Pay-by-Text solution enables merchants to offer a ‘swipe-less’ mobile payment option to their customers. The Pay-by-Text transaction takes place on the customer’s mobile phone, which means he or she can pay at any time and from anywhere. To set up payment, the customer just needs to text the vendor’s keyword to a five-digit number and, once set up, can essentially pay with one click on all future purchases. In addition, the app becomes a marketing tool. Once the customer has set up a Pay-by-Text account, the vendor can issue an invitation to receive text messages.
Singlepoint is in the initial stages of rolling out Pay-by-Text. For this service, the company will receive a monthly fee ranging from $10 to $100, depending on the merchant, and one percent of each transaction. Pay-by-Text was designed with temporary point-of-sale opportunities such as trade shows and farmers’ markets in mind. In the near-term, the company will focus most of its efforts on the donations market, in which the spontaneity of text messaging aptly matches the impulsive spirit with which many donations are made.
Singlepoint recently finalized the integration of Pay-by-Text with a backend payment platform from RedFynn Technologies. RedFynn provides payment-processing, point of sale, and payment solutions. Singlepoint now has the ability to provide all forms of credit card processing including Apple Pay, point-of-sale terminals, and cashless ATM. The 150,000 merchants using RedFynn’s payments technology are now automatically set up to offer Pay-by-Text, needing no additional setup.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Singlepoint.com
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