It was safe to say that there was no shortage in options when it came to the mobile payments field. With options ranging from Apple Pay to Square and beyond—and many more set to follow—it was enough to make one wonder if there were just too many choices out there.
A crowd of folks, meanwhile, thought there was room for one more competitor in the field, and thus ponied up a combined total of 575,000 pounds sterling—around $896,373 as of this writing—via the Crowdcube crowdfunding platform for Droplet.
With a combined total of 12.5 percent of the firm’s equity going to 327 investors, Droplet poses something of a novel possibility: it will offer a free cash transfer system for users along with mobile payments.
No fees, no nothing; just a way to move cash so easily from one person to another it’s like they were in the same room with wallets open. That’s likely to draw more than a few users, especially those looking for a comparatively simple solution without fees.
Droplet won’t stop there, of course, as it’s also set to have a variety of extras that will be available, including loyalty and rewards support and the promise of no transaction fees. These extras are said to be made with the business user in mind, so this will be a platform with merchants and consumers involved, making it sufficiently versatile to be at least able to keep up with the common horde of mobile payments options.
While Droplet certainly has something of a competitive advantage in its low-cost approach, it may not have that approach for long; a study from Ovum found that 84 percent of banks and retailers plan to put investment into mobile payment technology over the course of the next two years.
Thus it’s safe to say that someone’s going to hit on the idea of using what amounts to a freemium model for mobile payments before too much longer, and that might pull the last of Droplet’s teeth.
Still, it’s going to be something to watch in the coming months, especially if Droplet’s working on some new tricks in the meantime. If it can improve its loadout, it might well be better equipped to fend off the array of competitors both currently in the field and about to hit in the coming months. If it can’t, then we may have one more failure and 327 unhappy investors.