Basini joins mobile payments firm

Justin Basini, the former Capital One marketing chief who set up his own data company Allow, has emerged as marketing director of mobile payments company Zapp.
The venture is backed by VocaLink, the technology company behind the UK’s payment infrastructure. Due to launch in autumn 2014, the scheme has already signed up HSBC, First Direct, Nationwide, Santander and Metro Bank.
It allows people to pay for goods and services simply, securely and in real-time straight from their existing bank account. Research by Juniper estimates that the mobile payments market will be worth $670bn worldwide by 2015.
Allow was a joint venture between Basini and Howard Huntley, and offered to remove customers from marketing databases and register them with opt-out services such as the Mail Preference Service (MPS) and Email Preference Service.
The firm will then sold a customer’s data back to companies once they had chosen which brands they wanted to receive mail from.
At the time, Basini claimed the company was one of the first to create a business model around the ‘volunteered personal information’ market. However, it seems the concept did not strike a chord and failed to get enough consumers and brands to sign up. It has since folded.
Basini is perhaps best known for his time at Capital One UK, where as vice president of marketing and brand he overhauled the company’s reliance on mass direct mail campaigns – which had previously targeted nearly all UK homes – to adopt a more targeted approach. He also concentrated on other benefits, such as the fight against ID fraud.

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