Mobile Payment Magazine

Mobile Payments Venture Paydiant Closes $7.6 Million Funding Round from North Bridge Venture Partners and General Catalyst Partners

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Paydiant, a new Boston-based mobile payments venture, today announced that it closed a $7.6M round of funding led by North Bridge Venture Partners and General Catalyst Partners. The investment will be used to accelerate product development, sales and marketing for Paydiant, which plans to formally launch later this year.

The company was co-founded by Chris Gardner, Kevin Laracey and Joe Paratore — three proven entrepreneurs in the e-billing, payments and mobile space that have collaborated before.

All three have significant early-stage and public company experience, having founded or played key roles in companies that were pioneers in both online and mobile payments, and other emerging markets. Jim Moran, General Partner at North Bridge and John Simon, Managing Director at General Catalyst have joined Paydiant’s Board of Directors.

“Enabling consumers to use their phones to make everyday purchases is a huge market opportunity,” said Chris Gardner, co-founder of Paydiant. “We have assembled a team who understand both the business and technology issues that must be addressed to create new mobile payments offerings for broad adoption.

This group has hands-on experience creating and operating successful online and mobile platforms that facilitate billions of dollars in payments for many of the world’s largest companies today. We are fortunate to partner with North Bridge and General Catalyst who also have deep expertise in both mobile and payment technologies.”

Laracey was co-founder and CEO of edocs, the leading online billing and payments company that was acquired by Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) in 2005. At Siebel, he was the general manager of its self-service solutions group. Most recently, Laracey was a venture partner at Sigma Partners.

Gardner also worked at edocs where he served as vice president of products and marketing. After the acquisition by Siebel, he became the senior vice president of products and marketing at m-Qube, North America’s leading premium SMS mobile payments provider that was acquired by Verisign in 2006. Most recently, Gardner was the chief marketing officer at ExtendMedia, a digital media content delivery and commerce platform software company that was acquired by Cisco in 2010.

Joe Paratore was edocs’ vice president of engineering and technical services. After the acquisition by Siebel, he joined Gardner at m-Qube as the company’s senior vice president of technology operations. Paratore continued with Verisign and managed a large global staff and eight data centers as the general manager and vice president of technical operations and customer care for Verisign’s mobile payments and mobile messaging businesses.

Source: MarketWire

PayNearMe: Cash-based Mobile Payments

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How does a cash-based remote payment platform work? And how in the world do you pay with cash using your cell phone? Companies like Square and Intuit have taken a fairly literal approach to mobile credit card payments by creating hardware that turns your mobile device into a credit card scanner, but you can’t exactly do the same thing for cash.

Danny Shader’s company, PayNearMe, proposes the next-best thing. The platform allows users to proceed through a typical online transaction, but instead of paying with a credit card or electronic check, they receive a receipt (they can receive it on their phone or print it out directly from their computer), which they can take to their nearby 7-11 to pay with cash.

via Vator.tv.

airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard Win Best Mobile Money Product or Solution Award

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airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard Worldwide were honored for mobile payments innovation at the 16th Annual Global Mobile Awards held during Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011. The recently launched virtual card product, developed in collaboration between airtel Africa, Standard Chartered and MasterCard, received top honors as the Best Mobile Money Product or Solution.

Honored by a panel of mobile industry experts, the virtual card product was recognized as an innovative mobile payments solution that will offer consumers in Kenya, and eventually across Africa, greater participation in the financial system through mobile commerce. In collaboration between airtel Africa and Standard Chartered, the virtual card product is powered by MasterCard inControl (TM) technology and enables more people to connect to the global marketplace through their mobile phones.

Andre Beyers, airtel Africa’s chief marketing officer, and Daniel Monehin, area head, East & West Africa and Indian Ocean Islands, MasterCard Worldwide, received the award on behalf of the three companies at the Global Mobile Awards 2011 ceremony held at the Fira De Barcelona in Montjuïc, Barcelona, Spain.

The virtual card product enables airtel Africa customers in Kenya to use their mobile phone to make online purchases from MasterCard merchants around the world. The simplified online transaction works in the following way: each time an airtel customer is shopping online he or she will be able to request a single use shopping card number. airtel money services will then generate a special 16-digit number that enables the completion of the transaction. On completion of the transaction, a confirmation message will be sent to the consumer’s mobile phone. The single use feature of the virtual card product provides the consumer with a convenient and secure online shopping experience.

“We partnered with Standard Chartered and MasterCard in a joint effort to create affordable and innovative mobile services for consumers across Africa,” said Beyers. “It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by our peers in the mobile industry for the virtual card product, which we hope will set a new industry standard for mobile payments.”

“We are extremely pleased that this concept has been selected for the GSMA 2011 Best Mobile Money Product or Solution Award. This global award is fitting testimony to telecom & banking companies in Africa, who are the ‘agents-of-change’ in the development of mobile finance and commerce,” said Jaydeep Gupta, Standard Chartered Bank’s regional head, Distribution & Alternate Channels for Africa, NGL, MESA & India. “We are proud of our unique partnership with airtel Africa and MasterCard. Together we will continue to deliver innovative payment solutions across our geographies.”

Said MasterCard’s Monehin, “Consumers are increasingly reliant on mobile technology at each step of their lives – from staying connected with their personal networks to making payments on-the-go. We joined hands with airtel Africa and Standard Chartered to create the virtual card product that not only enhances people’s purchasing experiences, but also creates a financially inclusive mobile platform for people in Africa. We believe that innovations like the virtual card product will help ensure the long-term growth and sustainability of mobile commerce in Africa. We are committed to improving industry collaboration and fostering innovation as well as building interoperability across closed loop systems in Africa and abroad.”

Source: MasterCard

Major Mobile Operators Worldwide Announce Commitment to NFC Technology

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Many of the world’s leading operators, including América Móvil, Axiata Group Berhad, Bharti, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT Corporation, MTS, Orange, Qtel Group, SK Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor and Vodafone, have voiced their commitment to implementing Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, and intend to launch commercial NFC services in select markets by 2012.

“NFC is perhaps best known for its role in enabling mobile payments, but its applications go far beyond that,” said Franco Bernabè, Chairman, GSMA and CEO, Telecom Italia. “NFC represents an important innovation opportunity, and will facilitate a wide range of interesting services and applications for consumers, such as mobile ticketing, mobile couponing, the exchange of information and content, control access to cars, homes, hotels, offices car parks and much more.”

The market potential for NFC is significant—according to Frost & Sullivan, the total payment value for NFC globally will reach more than €110 billion in 2015 – and momentum behind the technology is growing rapidly. To address this opportunity and to provide valuable new services to mobile users worldwide, the operator community is focused on driving the standardised deployment of mobile NFC, using the SIM as the secure element to provide authentication, security and portability.

To achieve this, the GSMA will develop the necessary certification and testing standards to ensure global interoperability of NFC services. This interoperability is critical to the widespread adoption of NFC, enabling users to benefit from NFC services around the world, regardless of operator network or device type.

“As we have seen, the adoption of different approaches to NFC will only serve to fragment the market,” continued Bernabè. “By uniting around a single standardised approach to mobile NFC and by collaborating across the entire ecosystem, our industry will continue to develop the compelling services that customers demand.”

via World’s Leading Mobile Operators Announce Commitment to NFC Technology ~ GSM World.

Serbia’s Telenor Introduces New PlatiMo Mobile Payment System

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Serbian network operator Telenor has introduced a new mobile  payment service called PlatiMo. The  service allows customers to pay bills and perform other financial services via their mobile phones directly from their bank accounts.

The operator has selected an m-payment offering comprised of G&D’s SIM cards and SmartTrust Over-the-Air server software, and Halcom’s mobile payment system. Telenor has worked closely with the four banks involved—Komercijalna bank, Erste Bank, Credit Agricole and Raiffeisen Bank—to provide a state-of–the-art mobile payment system to their customers. These four banks as a group serve more than 50 percent of the Serbian market.

Telenor and the partner banks are currently are currently working to sign up merchants to the system. Telenor will soon be able to offer the option of paying utility bills for electricity, cable TV, water, Internet and other services through mobile payment. Moreover, Telenor and the partner banks are also aiming to expand mobile payments to ticketing, offering users the opportunity to pay for cinema, theater and concert tickets, taxi rides, and public transport.

Currently, subscribers using the PlatiMo application can pay mobile phone bills issued by Telenor, send money to other PlatiMo users, make online purchases, buy airplane tickets via the call center of Serbia’s largest national air company JAT Airways, and top up their prepaid accounts in the Telenor network.

After the promotional period, which ends in April, 2011, new banks will be introduced to the PlatiMo system, increasing the potential customer base.

What is more, thanks to cooperation with e-government, all PlatiMo users will have access to e-government services through the system and will be able to order personal documents, such as birth or citizenship certificates.

PlatiMo is simple-to-use, versatile and suitable for all commercially available mobile phones. It also meets the highest security standards for electronic payment transactions: The phones use special WPKI (Wireless Public Key Infrastructure) SIM cards from G&D, which provide an electronic certificate issued by the Halcom certificate agency. During the encrypted transactions, data are exchanged between the SIM card and a G&D SmartTrust Mobile Transaction Gateway server which is connected to PlatiMo’s four participating banks via Halcom’s 123 Pay! platform.

Consumers are protected in the event of cell phone loss or theft, since payments can only be made by entering a special additional PIN—the sPIN—which is different from the cell phone’s SIM PIN. Such security technology has been widely used in electronic banking for years and so far these systems have not seen any cases of misuse or fraud.

Source: Virtual Press Office (VPO)

CARTES in Asia : Digital Security and Smart Technologies – Hong Kong, March 29-31, 2011

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CARTES in Asia is a regional Exhibition for the APAC market and a high-level Congress covering digital security and smart technologies.

For its first edition in March 2010, CARTES in Asia brought together 116 exhibitors from the smart card and digital security industry and took its place among the major events dedicated to smart technologies worldwide. 2813 visitors from banks, telecoms, administration, IT security and retail sectors, had the opportunity to discover innovative technologies for card manufacturing, authentication solutions, payment solutions, mobile security and other innovative technical solutions.

The CARTES team organizes the sector’s leading international event CARTES & IDentification in Paris which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010 with 432 exhibitors and 18,768 international visitors . CARTES has promoted smart technologies and presented the main market trends and innovations through the most appropriate forms including conferences program, SESAMES Awards, animation areas, specific exhibition and demonstration areas.

CARTES events are organized by COMEXPOSIUM, the leading French professional trade fairs organizer, offering a high level of service and premium quality standards for exhibitors and visitors.

CARTES in Asia will benefit from the strong support of major regional associations, authorities and local development agencies to gather all the components of the smart technology value chain in the Asia Pacific region.

Date: 29-31 March 2011
Opening times:
29 March – 2.00pm to 5.30pm
30 & 31 March – 9.30am to 5.30pm

Place:
Hong Kong – AsiaWorld-Expo

Organizer:
COMEXPOSIUM

More information: Cartes in Asia

Sprint Selects BilltoMobile to Provide Direct to Mobile Billing for Sprint Customers

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BilltoMobile has announced a  Direct Mobile Billing Gateway Servce Provider agreement with Sprint, which will allow Sprint customers to charge online purchases directly to their Sprint bill. Once implementation is complete in the coming months, merchants and payment resellers using BilltoMobile’s mobile payment service will be able to offer this payment option to Sprint customers.

“On the heels of our Sprint Mobile Wallet launch, we are pleased to work with BilltoMobile to present an additional payment option that will allow Sprint subscribers to conveniently and safely complete purchases on the Web,” said Kevin McGinnis, vice president of Sprint Product Platforms. “Our agreement with BilltoMobile represents another step forward in our efforts to provide our customers with the most innovative services and applications on the market.”

“Partnering with Sprint represents a major milestone for BilltoMobile, as it expands our reach to a vast majority of wireless subscribers in the U.S.,” said Denise Archer, vice president of carrier partnerships, BilltoMobile. “BilltoMobile is the only mobile payments gateway that can offer online digital goods and services merchants the technology infrastructure and broad consumer reach necessary to provide customers with a viable mobile payment option.”

The agreement with Sprint extends BilltoMobile’s overall reach to more than 240 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. across multiple carriers. These customers will now have instant access to BilltoMobile’s exclusive Direct Mobile Billing platform, which offers a simple, secure payment option that requires no registration, no set up, no application or downloads and no association with other financial instruments such as credit or bank cards. Purchases are completed in seconds using a two-step authentication process, and customers don’t have to expose any sensitive account information while using the service.

Through BilltoMobile, merchants and authorized resellers receive significantly lower carrier-inclusive processing fees, and a more robust approach to mobile payment processing. BilltoMobile’s Direct Mobile Billing platform involves real-time direct connections with the carrier’s billing system, advanced carrier-direct authentication systems and a direct real-time connection between the BilltoMobile service and the carrier’s customer care systems.

Source: MarketWire

BilltoMobile Adds Sprint, Extends Reach to 240 Million U.S. Customers

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A year ago, few people in the U.S. had ever heard of BilltoMobile, a direct carrier billing company with roots in Korea. But the San Jose, Calif. company is fast emerging as a leader in the mobile payments space with direct billing arrangements with Verizon and AT&T and Friday, it’s adding Sprint to the list.

The latest announcement extends BilltoMobile’s reach to about 240 million customers in the U.S., who will be able to make purchases and charge them directly to their cell phone bill. BilltoMobile is actively looking at locking up more carriers in North America and is expanding the number of merchants it deals with directly.

via GigaOm.

Isis Mobile Payments Group Signs First Merchants

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The new Isis mobile-payments venture has recruited some merchants as it builds the acceptance side of its network, the Isis executive overseeing the merchant effort said on Wednesday.

“We do have signed merchants at this point,” Jim Stapleton, head of sales and account management at Isis and a veteran of AT&T Inc., tells Digital Transactions News. Stapleton, however, refuses to identify them, saying announcements would be made when the merchants and Isis are ready.

via Digital Transactions.