Mobile Payment Magazine

Gemalto Seeks Growth in NFC Market with NXP Partnership

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Working toward growing its presence in Near Field Communications (NFC) payment systems, Gemalto has entered into an agreement with NXP Semiconductors N.V., as well as the mobile payments trial in Singapore.

Gemalto’s activities range from the development of software applications through the design and production of secure personal devices such as smart cards, SIMs, e-passports and tokens, to the deployment of managed services for our customers. The company has more than 10,000 employees and 2009 revenues of  €1.654 billion.

The agreement with NXP, calls for Gemalto to integrate NXP’s MIFARE technology into its Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), which will expand the mobile contactless payment market because MIFARE is one of the most ubiquitous mobile contactless services and Gemalto’s SIMs are used in a large number of mobile devices.

The agreement enables Gemalto to complement its existing NFC application portfolio with MIFARE DESFire and MIFARE Plus  technology for its UICC security solutions. As a result, mobile operators and service providers will be able to offer a broad range of mobile contactless services thanks to the widened availability of UICC cards incorporating MIFARE.

This is the most widespread contactless technology worldwide and provides high levels of performance, flexibility and security in public transportation, access management, event ticketing and customer loyalty programs.
“MIFARE is already at the heart of contactless infrastructures around the world,” said Henri Ardevol,
vice president and general manager, secure transactions, NXP Semiconductors. “We are proud to
collaborate with Gemalto to offer the convenience of this technology to a new target of 5 billion mobile
phone users.”

“Adding the MIFARE capability to Gemalto’s NFC application portfolio is key for the mass deployment of
mobile contactless,” added Rémi de Fouchier, senior vice president, Trusted Services Management,
Gemalto. “We are enthused that more and more consumers around the world will enjoy the simplicity
and convenience of waving their mobile phone for couponing and stored value payment and transport
services.”

Source:  RCR Wireless News, Gemalto

Commidea Processes 80% of Contactless Transactions in UK

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Commidea, a leading card payment processing solution provider in the UK, has announced that one million contactless transactions with a total value of more than £4 million have been processed using Commidea solutions so far this year. This means that over 80% of contactless transactions in the UK are processed by Commidea.

As Commidea and industry numbers indicate, contactless payments are on the rise. More consumers are ‘tapping’ their contactless cards at convenience retail and food outlets to pay for transactions under £15. The transactions take less than half a second and eliminate the need for handling cash, therefore reducing queue times and helping to increase sales.

In addition to the emerging trend of contactless payments, customer transaction volumes across Commidea’s systems as a whole have increased by 60% from this time last year. An average of approximately eight million transactions are carried out each week using Commidea’s card payment processing systems online and at customer locations including Blockbuster, EAT, TGI FRiDAYS, Lush and Thomas Cook.

These statistics illustrate Commidea’s growing customer base and the continuing trend of consumers using contactless, credit and debit cards instead of cash for everyday transactions.

“Contactless payments are on the rise particularly in the convenience payment sector and the figures show Commidea’s technology is at the forefront of facilitating this trend,” said Ian Rutland, Director of Marketing and Communication at Commidea. “We have always provided secure, easy-to-use technology for our customers across the retail and hospitality industry and this commitment continues in new payment types such as contactless. Our solutions help retailers to meet customer demand for convenience by accepting card payments for items ranging from smaller ‘impulse’ buys up to luxury and holiday purchases.”

Source: RealWire

Report Shows Majority of Top 100 Financial Institutions Offer Mobile Banking

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2010 Mobile Banking ReportA recent report covering mobile banking reveals that over half of the Top 100 financial institutions offer mobile banking services as of September 2010.

Surprisingly, this activity is not concentrated among the Top 25 or even Top 50, with many smaller banks actively utilizing vendor capabilities to offer mobile solutions.  Of the Top 100, nearly 40% offer access via mobile web, while 32% offer SMS banking and/or alerts and 32% offer apps.

Apple’s iOS remains the main platform for launching application-based banking, but financial institutions have realized the importance of other operating system leaders.  Sixteen percent and fourteen percent now offer a RIM Blackberry or Google Android application, respectively.

A detailed evaluation of features available by channel also reveals that mobile web and app channels often provide virtually the same capabilities.  Balance inquiries and transaction history are standard, but new features help banks differentiate themselves from competition.  Seventeen percent offer GPS-enabled branch/ATM locators, and thirty-five percent allow mobile billpay (most require pre-entered payees, but not all).

Additionally, several banks are expanding their offerings to include mobile deposit capture, P2P, offers and loyalty programs, and rewards management and redemption.

The  study, released by First Annapolis, covers  mobile banking and payments capability and activity among the Top 100 U.S. financial institutions (ranked by deposits).  The report is the first data-intensive study of its kind and provides unique insights into how banks currently leverage mobile as a new channel to reach consumers.

Source: First Annapolis

America Movil Estimates 50 Million Potential “Mobile Banking” Market in Mexico

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Latin America’s largest wireless carrier, American Movil, will offer financial services to about 50 million people in Mexico who have mobile phones and no bank accounts, according to American Movil CFO Carlos Garcia Moreno. “There are many more telephones than there are bank accounts, and it’s important to bank all of those people that already have a phone,” Garcia Moreno, 53, said. “The numbers are enormous.”

With financial services, America Movil is taking advantage of its wireless Internet network to seek new opportunities for growth in Latin America, as the number of mobile-phone users nears 100 percent of the population. The company told investors last week it expects to boost sales by 6 percent to 8 percent each year through 2014, compared with an increase of 5.3 percent last quarter from a year earlier.

via America Movil CFO Sees 50 Million Potential Mexico Mobile Banking Users – Bloomberg.

Sybase Executive Summit – Nov. 30, 2010

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Sybase Executive Summit: Shaping the Financial Industry of the Future.
Date: On Tuesday November 30, 2010

This is an exclusive event for financial executives responsible for managing risk and enhancing returns, or delivering effective and efficient mobile commerce solutions.

This event features Martin Wolf – Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times as the keynote presenter. He is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London, writing a weekly column on the world economy. Martin was recently appointed as a member of the UK government’s new Independent Commission on Banking. This commission will formulate policy recommendations to reduce systematic risk in the banking system with a full report due September 2011.

via Sybase Executive Summit.

Verrus Mobile Payment

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Founded in 2000, Verrus was an early pioneer in pay by phone services beginning with North America’s first pay by phone parking installation in 2001, and the “OrderUp” mobile phone food and beverage ordering system used at Safeco Field launched in the Summer of 2005.

Today, the company’s service is available in over 90 cities and towns throughout North America and Europe making it the most widely-used pay by phone system. Using state-of-the-art IT infrastructure supporting payments via SMS, IVR, and Web, Verrus processes millions of transactions each year.

More information: Verrus Mobile Payment.

Indian Banks Introduce Instant Mobile Retail PaymentsIndi

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A new mobile retail payment system backed by some large banks in India will allow fund transfers between different banks and the use of SMS to make transactions from even low-end phones — features that are expected to make the system popular with consumers.

Because the Interbank Mobile Payment Service IMPS from National Payments Corporation of India NPCI can support transactions from even low-end phones, the service will be accessible to a larger number of Indian consumers, A.P. Hota, managing director and CEO of NPCI, said on Tuesday.

via Indian Banks Introducing Instant Mobile Retail Payments – PCWorld.

Tyfone Receives Patent for Mobile Wallet Technology

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Over the next two years, analysts forecast contactless payment transactions via MicroSD technology will be used by more than 20 million people in North America alone, at thousands of contactless payment terminals already in place. According to a Sept. 2009 forecast by Juniper Research, near-field communications (NFC) contactless payment global gross transaction value is expected to exceed $30 billion by 2012.

Tyfone  has recently been awarded a patent for its new mobile electronic wallet technology. The technology enables the use of a mobile phone having a memory card slot and a memory card compatible with the memory card slot to transmit transaction data to a reader device. The memory card includes circuitry used to produce a time-varying magnetic field that enables a contactless transaction. The circuitry used to produce a time-varying magnetic field may include smartcard circuitry.

Tyfone, based in Portland, OR and Bangalore, India, is a global provider of unified mobile money and secure transaction infrastructure for mobile banking, mobile identity management, and mobile contactless NFC payments

“Tyfone recognizes the value of this intellectual property and the hard work that it has taken to continue developing innovative solutions, confirmed by this patent issuance. This patent will uniquely enable solutions that will allow consumers to benefit from the convergence of money and mobility,” said Dr. Siva Narendra, chief technology officer at Tyfone. “Our innovations allow financial institutions to provide secure, convenient and holistic solutions, therefore enable a value driven user experience to multiple generations of consumers, whose needs and usage models differ widely. Tyfone’s neutral secure commerce solutions are easily implemented and scalable by financial institutions, merchants, account issuers, or network operators. Ensuring security and a positive consumer experience are our guiding principles.”

“As recent news from major financial, mobility and computing brands demonstrate, all the stakeholders in financial services and commerce are converging on mobile,” said Dr. Narendra. “The NFC and contactless market is heating up now more than ever as handset manufacturers, OS developers, network operators, payment card networks and financial institutions all race to secure a stake in this technology and its direction. Tyfone’s innovations include a secure end-to-end mobile money and transaction platform that also provides neutral contactless NFC solutions.

Unlike software-only technologies that refer to their application as an electronic wallet and are limited in functionality and security, Tyfone’s platform includes the SideTap™ neutral secure element — thereby creating a digital container and functionality, unavailable in software-only solutions, for securely storing content for a true electronic “wallet.” This solution enables any stakeholder to securely manage multiple consumer credit, debit, pre-paid, loyalty, identification, and transportation accounts for use in a wide range of payment and other secure transactions, while maintaining the storage capabilities of existing memory cards that consumers have grown accustomed to.

In the growing contactless payment marketplace, Tyfone’s patents, SideTap memory card product, and u4ia (pronounced euphoria) mobile money and secure transaction platform enable any commerce stakeholder to bring immediate scale by converting most existing handsets to be NFC ready.

Source: Tyfone

Mobile Phones Leapfrog Traditional Financial Institutions in Developing World

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When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January, phones enabled Haitians to withdraw cash at local banks or access account funds to pay for groceries.

The spawning of a “mobile money” market in Haiti illustrates how mobile funds-transfer applications could develop elsewhere. Now card companies and mobile carriers in various parts of the world are coming together to meld the popularity of cell phones with access to financial services.

via Worlds of Differences in Mobile Money Strategy – American Banker Article.

Singapore to Develop NFC Mobile Payment System

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The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore has issued a Call for Collaboration (CFC) to accelerate the proliferation and adoption in Singapore of mobile payment services using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, a secure form of short-range wireless technology built on open standards.

With NFC, consumers  can use their phones to make a wide variety of payments, including credit card payments as well as most CEPAS e-payment services using FlashPay and ez-link cards, simply by holding the phone in front of card readers.

The CFC would be awarded by June, 2011, and the target date for commercial rollout of the NFC payment system is February, 2012.

via AsiaOne Business: Get ready to pay with your mobile phone.