Mobile Payment Magazine

The 2nd Mobile Payment China 2011: July 12-13, 2011, Shanghai, China

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The 2nd Mobile Payment China 2011 is dedicated to establishing a dynamic platform for knowledge sharing, networking and collaboration. Embracing the two main subjects – User Experience and Cooperation for Mutual Benefit, the conference will be delivering the in-depth insights into the spotlight in terms of how to maximize the market recognition to pave the way for further development.

Location: Shanghai

Start Date: Tuesday, July 12, 2011

End Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2011

More information: Mobile Payment China

Mobile Banking Aids Healthcare in Developing World

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In countries where access to traditional banking services is limited, more and more people are utilizing mobile phones to send money with services such as M-Pesa, which now boasts more than 13 million subscribers. The technology may be a boon to the health field as well, as the same systems can be used by organizations such as the World Food Program, which uses mobile devices for some of its food aid voucher programs.

The application allows a food vender to enter a person’s voucher code into a mobile phone, and the system automatically reimburses the vendor via mobile payment. The convenience encourages retailers to participate in the food program, and cuts paperwork. The same technology could easily be applied to conditional cash transfer programs, which are health promotion initiatives that offer cash incentives to poor families for getting children vaccinated, or sending them to school.

Read more, via PBS NewsHour.

Brazil: Promising Market for Mobile Payments

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With a penetration rate over 102%, Brazil has one of the largest rates of cell phones in Latin America. Despite of that, the mobile payment market in the country is still small, with few transaction  made through cell phone.

Nevertheless, due to the enormous potential of the mobile payment market in Brazil, all stakeholders involved in the means of payment landscape are currently focused on developing new mobile payment platforms and creating products utilizing cell phones as a means of payment.

The total number of mobile payment transactions in Brazil reached a total of 3.9 million in 2010. This number is negligible in comparison to the total number of transactions effectuated by credit and debit cards that reached a total of 5.8 billion transactions in 2010. With growth rates over 30 percent in the short term, the number of transaction is likely to reach 5.1 million by the end of 2011.

“There are drivers with high impact in the short and medium terms that are likely to leverage the usage of this payment model in the country. A considerable unbanked population in Brazil, increase on mobile payment solutions and bundling advantages to other services are the main ones”, explains Marcelo Kawanami, Industry Manager for Frost & Sullivan. The company has produced a report on Brazil’s mobile payment market, and expects the industry to take off starting in 2012.

Source: NewswireToday

Fifth Third Bank to Offer Mobile Banking with ClairMail Solution

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Fifth Third Bank has selected ClairMail to power its new mobile banking technology and services.  ClairMail, Inc., a mobile banking and payments solution provider, will provide Fifth Third Bank with a solution to allow the bank’s customers better mobile access to their accounts, bill paying capabilities and real time personalized text alerts, thereby gaining greater control over their accounts and overall finances.

ClairMail’s  scalable mobile platform  also has the flexibility to allow Fifth Third Bank to connect to multiple financial systems and future-proof their mobile powered offerings.

“At Fifth Third we are committed to providing our customers with the most efficient and secure solutions to satisfy all banking needs,” said Larry McClanahan, vice president & director of digital delivery, Fifth Third Bank. “Due to increased customer demand in this rapidly growing market, we realized the need to adopt a comprehensive mobile solution. After extensive vendor evaluation, we chose ClairMail’s mobile platform to strategically grow our mobile initiative. Now our customers will have extended bank access through a service that goes everywhere and anywhere they are.”

The ClairMail mobile banking solution gives Fifth Third the ability to provide its customers with greater control over their personal finances through mobile web, SMS and a client application on most  mobile devices, including the iPhone.

The platform lets customers perform various activities including checking account balances, performing account transfers and viewing transaction history. They will also have the ability to sign up for personalized alerts over SMS, while defining preferences for alert triggers (low-balance thresholds or event occurrences that activate alerts) and frequency.

“Fifth Third is dedicated to providing the highest quality financial products and services to its customers and realized the necessity to utilize ClairMail’s mobile banking and payments platform to provide an effective, convenient vehicle that satisfies customer demand,” said Pete Daffern ClairMail CEO. “Fifth Third’s commitment to an extensible mobile banking rollout demonstrates their forward-looking commitment to improving customer acquisition and retention, reduce costs and drive new revenue opportunities through the mobile channel.”

Source: MarketWire

Mobile Financial Services Provide Banking Solutions to Rural Kenya

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Nuru International, a U.S.-based social venture that equips the poor living in remote areas to end extreme poverty in their communities, is using innovative new technologies for mobile banking to increase access to basic financial services for rural households in Kenya. The organization is working with Mifos cloud-based MIS and M-PESA mobile money transfer services to create a viable solution to some of the issues that persist in providing financial services in these difficult service areas.

“One of the biggest problems we face when it comes to finance and banking for the extreme rural poor is how to disburse loans and payments to our farmers, we don’t want to give large amounts of cash to them because they have to cover long distances on foot, have no secure place to keep the cash, and robbery and theft are real concerns.” — Vivian Lu, Community Economic Development Program Manager.

Nuru’s microfinance program has helped extend the reach of mobile money in rural Kenya. The combined technologies of Mifos and M-PESA have helped to create a branchless banking structure, allowing Nuru savings members in remote areas of Kenya access to some of the basic financial services that traditional banks offer. M-PESA is a mobile phone based money transfer service offered through Safaricom, allowing users to transfer money to other users, pay bills, and purchase air time. The service has great potential to be leveraged in mobile banking, allowing people to complete basic financial transactions without needing to visit a physical bank. Mifos is developing integration with M-PESA and allows Nuru an affordable way to scale. Because it’s a cloud-based application, Nuru can access it from mobile phones and netbooks, improving their reach in rural areas.

Nuru recognizes the importance of savings as a critical and often overlooked component to economic growth in rural areas. The Community Economic Development model is a savings-led program that offers financial training. Nuru members are trained in the fundamentals of financial planning, budgeting, saving, and responsible loan management, before they are eligible to apply for individual loans.

Source: PR Web

Merchant Buy-in Is Key to Success of Mobile Payment Growth

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Aspiring mobile payment service companies should engage with retailers in determining market requirements to enable mobile phone-initiated payments and services at the retail point of sale.

According to a recent survey from Sybase 365, 40% of survey respondents cited the main inhibitor of widespread mobile payment adoption was a lack of coordination between key stakeholders, including mobile operators, merchants, payment processors, banks and developers. The call for an organized approach to engaging retailers comes from  VeriFone Systems, Inc., the leading payment solutions provider in the United States. The company urges mobile payment industry participants to be careful of causing confusion or alienating merchants to the emerging technologies of mobile payment.

“This isn’t just an issue of adding an NFC reader, it requires deep software richness at the point-of-sale to interact with the smartphone and manage a services-based model encompassing new applications and deployments without disrupting operation of existing card systems.”

Responding to growing interest from major industry players intent on claiming a stake in emerging mobile commerce opportunities, VeriFone CEO Douglas G. Bergeron articulated key guidelines to ensure that mobile payments don’t follow the path of previous alternative payment schemes that only succeeded in alienating merchants. VeriFone supplies a large majority of card payment solutions employed in the U.S. by retailers large and small and over the past 30 years has led the way in retail adoption of new payment technologies.

“Emerging mobile payments platforms represent a leap forward in electronic payment transactions, but those who want to claim leadership in this space have to reconcile merchant resistance to the imposition of costs to implement new infrastructure that will be managed an increasingly complex environment,” Bergeron said.

“The retail point of sale represents a point of convergence for smartphone-initiated payments, social networking and electronic couponing, but it won’t happen if retailers are expected, on faith, to absorb the costs of making it work,” Bergeron added. “This isn’t just an issue of adding an NFC reader, it requires deep software richness at the point-of-sale to interact with the smartphone and manage a services-based model encompassing new applications and deployments without disrupting operation of existing card systems.”

Bergeron outlined six key “rules” that industry participants need to adhere to in order to ensure success of mobile commerce:

Rule #1: “Deployment and management of complex NFC technologies will require significant ongoing services from the retailer’s payment systems provider. Until retailers are assured of receiving real value from mobile commerce, service providers who stand to gain from either carrier fees, advertising revenue or transaction charges must be willing to bear the costs of this highly disruptive paradigm shift.”

Rule #2: “Mobile commerce must add value to the consumer. Tapping a phone is a gimmick, no different from tapping a card or fob. In addition to providing the ability to pay for stuff by phone, service providers and retailers need to provide real additional value –- such as coupons, loyalty rewards and discounts — for consumers to leave their wallets at home.

Rule #3: “Mobile commerce must be streamlined with existing POS services and managed well for the retailer. Retailers won’t tolerate the need for multiple methods of acceptance to accommodate what will become a wide array of mobile commerce schemes. All ideas, regardless of where or who generates them, must converge at a unified point-of-sale.”

Rule #4: “Mobile commerce must go from zero to 90 mph in five seconds. Consumers will not embrace mobile commerce without the confidence that it is being widely accepted. If it only works at a few select retailers, it dies a quick death. Ten percent acceptance is not sustainable.”

Rule #5: “Mobile commerce must be integrated with other forms of payment. Mobile commerce won’t lead to the quick death of plastic cards and must work with existing payment systems that are certified by all major processors and installed in the vast majority of large and small retailers.”

Rule #6: “Mobile commerce must be ironclad secure. Security, both real and perceived, is imperative to the adoption and sustainability of mobile commerce. Even minor setbacks in security could compromise consumer adoption and stop the movement in its tracks.

Bergeron’s rules are based on years of experience working with retailers to implement payment technologies and adapt to changing security requirements. As the trusted supplier of payment solutions, VeriFone has the ability to work with retailers and service providers in assessing market requirements and integrating existing infrastructure with complex new technologies required to make mobile commerce work smoothly.

via VeriFone Says Merchant Buy-In Key to Success of Mobile Commerce | Business Wire.

Mobile Money: An Analysis of the Current Playing Field

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Mobile Money falls into three categories:

  • Mobile Remittance – Both domestic and international movement of value via mobiles.
  • Mobile Information – Almost exclusively limited to bank accounts one holds or has access to.
  • Mobile Payment – Authorization of payment for goods or services via 3rd party Debit / Credit systems – “the cards in your wallet on your mobile”

Mobile Payment is the utopia – But will any of these become common place? If so which and if not why not?

via GLG News.

Many Financial Institutions Favor iPhone for Banking App’s, Says Analyst

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While Android has made huge strides against the iPhone in terms of smartphone usage,according to Aviva Litan, an Analyst at information technology research and advisory company  Gartner, Inc., banks are more comfortable with the iPhone for their banking apps. And even then, she writes, the mobile apps that banks are releasing “offer limited functionality and don’t enable high-risk transactions such as adding new payees for bill payment or new accounts for fund transfers.”

In a recent blog post, Litan writes:

“Most of the financial institutions I work with or use have released iPhone apps but have stayed away from other mobile operating systems and platforms. I asked a few banker colleagues the reason for this, and they told me that; the iPhone development environment is easier to work with, the applications are better controlled in terms of distribution (using the iTunes store), and that they didn’t have the security confidence or appetite yet to develop mobile apps for at least ten operating systems or handset versions (e.g. various Blackberry versions, Symbian, Android) that they would need to support to reach more of their customer population.”

More via Gartner.

Glenbrook Payments Essentials Boot Camp: April 13,15, 2011, New York, NY

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Payments systems designs, functions and uses; payment system volumes and the dramatic shifts in actual and projected payments usage; key trends and issues in payments systems in the United States; how payments systems compare by economic model, regulatory environment, processing support and risk management; how cross border payments and other country payments systems compare to domestic U.S. payments and systems.

Core Systems
How the basic payments systems in the U.S. market work. Cards, checking, ACH, cash and wire transfer are covered “soup to nuts”. You’ll learn how the “wiring” actually works, who the players are, what drives the fundamental economics of the systems, who the regulators are and how the rules are set and changed.

Perspectives
How each of the key constituents of the industry view payments; economic and other motivations; how behavior is changing and why. Constituents include consumers, banks, merchants, billers, enterprises, networks and processors.

Emerging Payments – how to understand the many emerging players, products, technologies in payments. This section covers:

  • Mobile Payments – a comprehensive review of activity in the U.S. market, across multiple domains and technologies, using Glenbrook’s “Mobile Payments Market Map”
  • Chip and Contactless Cards – what’s happening in the U.S. and how to understand it in context of the global payments industry
  • Online Payments – eCommerce market structure and segments, the leading alternative payments providers and an emerging set of new players with surprisingly different offerings
  • Bill Payments – multiple consumer options, all growing at the expense of check
  • POS Payments – new card products and new ACH products – is the tipping point anywhere near?
  • B2B Payments – new ACH and card products; why checks are still important; handling cross border payments
  • P2P and Social Payments – prepaid and mobile offerings for domestic and international remittances

Who Should Attend

  • Bank product managers, risk managers, or sales managers who need a broader perspective or are new to the business
  • Product and sales managers from payments processors and service providers who need to understand how developments in other payments systems impact their offerings, or who have responsibility for developing and selling products and services into the financial services industry
  • Technology and service executives who are building products that leverage payment systems
  • Investors, inventors and analysts who want to improve their knowledge base on existing and emerging payments systems
  • Management teams from payments start-up companies who want to gain insight into what has been successful – and what hasn’t – as our industry has evolved

More information: Glenbrook Payments Essentials Bootcamp, New York – 2011

Tanzania Working to Revise Mobile Banking Laws

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A new law to regulate mobile banking in Tanzania is in the pipeline as part of efforts by the government to enhance compliance in the business. Since the introduction of the mobile banking services in 2008 in the country there was no proper law to guide and regulate the m-banking despite its tremendous growth and dynamism.

And analysts are questioning the strictness of the existing laws and regulations to prevent any possible illicit activity such as money laundering and terrorism financing that might engulf the mushrooming mobile phone-based transactions. According to a senior Bank of Tanzania official, a national payments system bill is expected to be tabled in Parliament for debate this year. Once enacted, the law would boost mobile commerce while ensuring more security.

via The Citizen (Tanzania).