According to a survey conducted by Ogilvy & Mather, the answer is pretty clear, at least when it comes to mobile payments. In the past year, a slew of tech brands have introduced their own version of a mobile payment option; Google’s new Wallet app, the upcoming iPhone’s payment enabling chips and Jack Dorsey’s Square. While all reputable sources, when consumers were asked who they trust to handle mobile payments, they were more likely to stick with the same brands they currently trust payments today – specifically credit-card companies such as Visa, American Express and MasterCard.

Facebook was cited as the lest trusted brand among a list of large consumer brands, with only 12% expressing trust – furthermore the group was more likely to trust the United States Postal Service with mobile payments than Apple, Microsoft or Google.

What does this mean?   The survey suggests larger tech companies partner with credit-card brands in order to elevate service and build trust.

@EMortek

Josh Bernhoff, writing for AdAge Digital, has an interesting point - Don’t Treat Smartphones Like ‘Little PCs’. If we confuse the two we risk missing out on what Josh feels is the coming app…well now honestly I was going to say ‘appocolypse,’ but that sounds negative. But if we go with ‘appenaissance’ it sounds too much like ‘applesauce.’ Oh man…is it Friday yet? Let’s just say Josh feels strongly that a Golden Age of phone apps is right around the corner, and if we are thinking of our phones only as little computers we risk missing the boat.  He concludes his article by proposing a 4-stage roadmap, one marketers can use to successfully integrate this unique technology, as opposed to simply chasing it.

@BenWritten

Admit it. We’re getting closer and closer to the creepy world where instead of pulling out your wallet, you simply run an app on your phone to pay for your purchases. And you’re secretly excited about it. Wait, you’re not?

Well, that’s okay. But more and more consumers are getting more comfortable with the idea of m-commerce. But just knowing that people shop via mobile phone doesn’t mean you know the whole story. Do they prefer to shop via apps? Facebook? In what mobile channels should you set up shop?

According to a new article from eMarketer, our old friend e-mail is the top performing channel. eMarketer cites research from ExactTarget that found 56 percent of smartphone owners who made a purchase after receiving a mobile marketing message did so because of because of a mobile e-mail. Close behind were text messages, Facebook, and shopping applications such as Amazon or Groupon. Interestingly, an actual telephone call (18 percent) led to purchases more frequently than messages via location-based services such as Foursquare (15 percent) and non-shopping related applications (11 percent.)

@NeilAndrewJames