Blaze Mobile, a mobile banking application, said its consumers access the Blaze Mobile Wallet an average of nine times each day.

Of the active consumers, 50 percent of the active users viewed their account balance and receipts. Mobile Commerce Daily’s Chris Harnick spoke with Michelle Fisher, CEO of Blaze Mobile, Berkeley, CA, about Blaze’s mobile commerce initiatives.

What has Blaze’s marketing strategy been to drive uses of the mobile wallet?
Blaze uses a variety of communications methods to reach existing and new Blaze Mobile customers, including email marketing, blogs and social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Our video series with customers has been especially popular. We also work closely with our partners that provide Blaze Mobile downloads including iTunes and GetJar, to ensure the experience is smooth. 

As with most products, our customers are our best marketing vehicle.  We’ll complement this with direct marketing later this year.

What do you attribute to the success you’ve seen?
We attribute the high usage rates to convenience and functionality.

The comprehensive set of features Blaze offers is we think one of the biggest drivers of usage. With a single application you can check balances, transfer funds, as well as browse and purchase movie tickets.

A single easy-to-use application with a suite of features provides a user experience that becomes familiar to the customer.

What can be done to increase consumers using the mobile wallet?
Continued additions to the types of merchants that accept PayPass technology as a form of payment will help support a consumer’s ability to easily use their mobile wallet as a generally accepted form of payment.

What do you do to convince a consumer if one calls your company and says “I’m curious, but hesitant about using my mobile phone as a payment device?”
The biggest hesitancy from consumers is around the security of using a mobile wallet for payment. 

We really emphasize the multiple levels of security build into the phone with consumers. We market this messaging and include it in our FAQ: Blaze does not store any of your account information on your cell phone. Your blaze wallet is simply a display of information that is stored securely with encryption on Blaze Servers.

Also, in order to view your account information, Blaze requires a mandatory PIN to open your wallet. If you want, you can also enable another pin which will be required for you to complete a transaction if any of the cards in your wallet are used and you can set it for any dollar amount you set.

Last, but not least, for contactless payment, you are limited to $25 or less without a signature.

What is your outlook for contactless payments in 2010?
This should be the first year of significant commercial activity for non-card contactless devices such as the sticker.

What participating retailers have you seen the highest usage?
Unfortunately, we can’t disclose the information at this time.