Mobile Payment Magazine

Bank of Montreal Launches “Tap and Pay”

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BMO Bank of Montreal today launched its Mobile PayPass Tag, a technology that allows BMO personal credit card customers to make purchases through a sticker affixed to their mobile phone and receive an instant email verification of each transaction.

By making the PayPass technology available for use on mobile devices, consumers no longer need to carry cash or coin, or even a purse or wallet, with them to make small-dollar-value purchases. They can just tap their mobile phone over the PayPass reader at the point of sale and the transaction is instantly processed to their BMO credit card account. For purchases under $50, no Personal Identification Number (PIN), swipe or signature is required.

Through MasterCard’s inControl platform, BMO’s Mobile PayPass Tag users can easily monitor their spending by opting to receive email notifications that report the merchant and exact location of each PayPass purchase they make with their tag. The tag and email notification services are free to BMO MasterCard cardholders. PayPass technology is already embedded in more than seven million of BMO’s MasterCard credit cards. The PayPass tag for mobile devices simply makes using PayPass that much easier — you don’t even have to pull your card out of your wallet.

“We know that Canadians’ use of cash for smaller-value purchases is based on their desire to get in and out quickly when buying day-to-day items like gas, a quick lunch or a coffee,” said David Heatherly, VP, Payment Products, BMO Bank of Montreal. “PayPass is part of the movement toward a ‘cashless’ society. It’s faster and more convenient than cash or debit, which requires a swipe and PIN.”

Along with speed and convenience, PayPass tag users have the same zero-liability purchase protection and anti-fraud capabilities available on all BMO MasterCard products. And they can collect the same rewards that they earn on their BMO MasterCard credit card, which means PayPass users earn rewards on their total spend and collect more rewards faster.

Merchant Acceptance of PayPass Technology Growing Quickly

“Canadians tell us they prefer simplified, electronic payment methods. Given the prevalence of smartphones, and a quickly expanding network of PayPass merchants, we think mobile PayPass is poised to take off as a popular payment method for Canadians,” said Scott Lapstra, Vice President, Emerging Payments, MasterCard Canada.

According to Mr. Lapstra, PayPass transactions account for nearly 10 per cent of all MasterCard credit card transactions in Canada, with the average PayPass transaction at just over $40 – and close to 50 per cent of those transactions being for purchases of $25 or less.

4G World Asia Call for Papers

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4G World is launching the first ever 4G WORLD ASIA, set for April 17-19, 2012, at the Raffles City Convention Centre in Singapore.

4G World is the only conference and expo focused exclusively on the next-generation trends and technologies fueling growth across mobile network connections, advanced devices, applications and content.

4G World has announced a  call for papers for 4G WORLD ASIA. Prospective speakers are invited to submit proposals by Monday, Oct. 31. The organization is seeking papers describing original ideas, groundbreaking results and/or quantified network/system experiences. In particular, they encourage submissions that highlight real-world deployments, new application domains, innovative system and solution designs, and new approaches to customer experience, business models and monetization of networks.

Submission process
Proposals for the call for papers must be submitted electronically on the 4G WORLD ASIA Web site.

 

NFC-enabled Point of Sale Ready to Explode, Says Report

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Hosted POS Revenue Projections - AITESeeking to sell hardware and grow revenue, the major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)—VeriFone, Ingenico, and Hypercom—have developed and begun to implement business strategies that will drive near-field-communication (NFC) technologies into general availability in the United States, opening the door for a variety of new mobile marketing solutions enabled at the POS.

The current inflexibility of transaction-routing infrastructure ensures that existing authorization infrastructure will be unable to handle the new transaction types created by these marketing solutions. This will force the rapid evolution of a new set of hosted transaction-gateway and terminal-management solutions, with revenue opportunities for gateway providers approaching US$0.35 billion annually by 2015. Payments firms that miss the move will take a hit; merchant acquirers, independent sales organizations (ISOs), gateways, processors, and payment networks must develop a strategy that ensures delivery of flexible and centrally hosted POS environments.

A new report from Aite Group projects the deployment of mobile-capable hardware, software, and transaction-routing capabilities necessary to enable point-of-sale-integrated mobile marketing solutions and mobile payments in the United States. Based on more than 50 Aite Group interviews with industry stakeholders conducted from April through July 2011, the report also details the transformation of today’s point-of-sale (POS) infrastructure into tomorrow’s mobile environment.

“Current trends in the payments industry are driving a more complex point-of-sale infrastructure that will require POS services to be offered as hosted monthly services,” says Rick Oglesby, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. “The POS terminal itself may soon become more similar to a cable TV box, opening a portal to a wealth of services to be accessed at the point of transaction. For payments companies, an opportunity exists to be the cable company itself, aggregating the various services in a gateway model and simplifying the way in which services can be accessed.”

Source: Aite Group

VeriFone Raises Outlook on Mobile Payment Hopes

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VeriFone Systems Inc. posted better-than-expected quarterly results and raised its full-year outlook as it ropes in more customers for mobile payment technologies. The credit card swipe machine maker is betting on strong demand for near field communication (NFC) technology that allows people to pay for their purchases by waving an NFC-enabled mobile phone.
[Read more…]

mHITs Australia SMS Payment Service Wins 2011 Australian Mobile Awards in Finance, Business and mCommerce Category

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The mHITs Australia SMS payment service was announced as a WINNER in the 2011 Australian Mobile Awards. mHITs was selected as the winner of the Mobile Trading Platform section within the Finance, Business and mCommerce category of the awards.

“We are very excited to have received this award” says mHITs founder and CEO Harold Dimpel. “mHITs is a simple SMS based payment service that is available to all Australian mobile phone users. This latest award is recognition that innovation and successful commercialization are possible even in challenging economic times” he continues.

The mHITs service allows users to send and receive payments via SMS text message.  Users can send and receive payments to each other by SMS or can order and pay for food and beverage items such as coffee from mHITs venues.  Focusing on micro-payments, the platform is the only carrier-independent and bank-independent mobile payment wallet in the Asia-Pacific region that offers full service functionality including person-to-person and merchant payment options including Point Of Sale capability.

Source: PR Wire

Mobile Malware – What It Is and How To Protect Your Business

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As smartphone sales are growing, the development of mobile malware, viruses that penetrate the security system of mobile devices, also increases. Because the smart phones are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and their operating systems are becoming more similar to a computer, it is now possible for them to be infected with malware and it is important for all business owners to be aware of this.

Just like computer malware, mobile malware is installed on your smartphone and will attempt to steal information and data stored on your phone. The information that can be stolen includes documents, passwords, email login details and even credit card details just like on a PC.
[Read more…]

Mitek Systems Brings “Point and Shoot” Balance Transfer to Smartphones

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Mitek SystemsMitek Systems, Inc., a provider of mobile-imaging applications using smartphone cameras for check deposits, bill payments and ACH enrollments, today announced an innovative application for the financial services industry that enables consumers to switch bank credit card accounts as simply as “Point, Shoot and Transfer.”

Mitek Mobile Balance Transfer, a new, easy, attractive and cost-effective way for a bank to acquire new credit card customers, will be demonstrated for the first time on Sept. 21 to attendees at the FinovateFall 2011 conference in New York.

Mobile Balance Transfer joins the rapidly growing family of mobile-banking applications for banks, credit unions, brokerages and payment-management providers that are all rooted in the company’s patented mobile image-capture and data-extraction capabilities.  Along with Mobile Deposit, Mobile Photo Bill Pay and Mobile ACH Enrollment, the newest Mitek app gives financial institutions a powerful platform of customer-acquisition and -retention tools.

The mobile application enables a bank’s customer to use a smartphone camera to take a picture of a competitor’s credit card payment coupon.  The customer transmits the information to the bank, which then can offer the customer a better interest rate to incent the customer to open a new credit card account and transfer an existing balance.

For banks, Mobile Balance Transfer broadens the reach of traditional balance-transfer-marketing programs, enabling the bank to interact with the customer in real time.  By accepting the bank’s offer, the consumer simply transfers his or her outstanding credit card balance to a new credit card account offering a more attractive rate, saving the customer time and money.

“The better banks understand the power of the digital-scanning devices in consumers’ hands, the more they want to add applications that create more intimate relationships with their customers that are based on convenience and trust,” said Mitek President and CEO James B. DeBello.

“Mobile Balance Transfer is our latest product that does just that,” he said.  “We’re responding to the banks’ requests for greater functionality and simplicity for users. The breadth of capabilities found in our imaging services, and now on the devices themselves, further position Mitek as the ‘Gold Standard’ in mobile banking.”

“We’re seeing financial institutions starting to formulate their mobile-imaging strategies in interesting ways,” DeBello said.  “It’s now clear that every bank or credit union needs one because the huge growth in smartphones and tablets dictate that you either have a mobile-imaging strategy or you’ll be woefully behind your competition.”

All of the Mitek apps for financial institutions comport with U.S. banking regulations for accuracy and security, and all are compatible with leading devices and wireless operating systems, including iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

Mitek also recently launched its Mobile Imaging Cloud™ Service, which provides mobile application developers and businesses with a fast, cost-effective way to create smartphone and tablet apps that use the camera as an input method for a wide variety of tasks, eliminating the need to keystroke data from documents.  DeBello said the company believes the Mobile Imaging Cloud service will be attractive to a number of vertical industries, especially insurance and healthcare.

Mitek’s extractive-imaging technology works with both paper and non-paper documents, including drivers’ licenses, gift cards, receipts, invoices, tax documents and many others.

How Mobile Balance Transfer from Mitek works

Knowing that most of their retail customers have credit card accounts with competing banks, financial institutions can add Mobile Balance Transfer to their arrays of mobile-banking apps available to customers.  When consumers access their mobile-banking accounts, they see an icon for an app that offers them a better credit card rate.

Upon opening the app during a mobile-banking session, consumers are prompted to snap photos of credit card coupons from their current issuers.  Mobile Balance Transfer accurately and securely converts the photographed information into data files that electronic banking systems can use to extend a more competitive offer to the consumer, including interest rates, terms and conditions.

Consumers can accept the offers with a single touch of their device keypads, and the banks will automatically transfer the balances and establish new accounts.  No paperwork, no junk mail, no fuss.

Consumers gain reduced costs on their credit card accounts and the banks offering Mobile Balance Transfer gain new credit card customers more cost-effectively than previous balance-transfer methods.

Source: PR Newswire

How Mobile Payment Solutions Will Play a Critical Role in Daily Deals

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Paul Gain, CEO of Monster Offers  and ZalaPay, will be a featured speaker at the Daily Deal Media Conference, discussing how Mobile Payment and Banking solutions will play a critical role in improving the Daily Deal experience for customers, merchants and deal providers.

Leading Daily Deal analytics and aggregation company Monster Offers recently announced a new social mobile payment and banking solutions platform that will be managed as a subsidiary of Monster Offers called ZalaPay.

ZalaPay mobile financial services include “EZ-Click” Mobile Cashier, Redemption, Loyalty, Daily Deal Wallet, P2P Mobile Money, and Pre-Paid Debit Cards.

“The Daily Deal industry is still quite young and right now Daily Deal providers need to focus on how to make deals easier to buy, redeem, track, not to mention how to develop and implement customer loyalty programs. Recent mobile banking solutions are making this possible and the Daily Deal Media Conference is the perfect forum to discuss the nuances of mobile and how it will affect daily deals and overall consumer behavior,” said Paul Gain, Monster Offers CEO.

Monster Offers is a leading mobile banking solutions company and Daily Deal aggregator, collecting daily deals from multiple sites in local communities across the U.S. and Canada. Focused on providing innovation and utility for Daily Deal consumers and providers, the company collects and publishes thousands of daily deals and allows consumers to organize these deals by geography or product categories, or to personalize the results using keyword search.

The company will introduce new mobile technology in 2011 to address unmet category needs in areas such as loyalty, rewards, payment processing, merchant services, and a Daily Deal eWallet. Monster Offers recently launched its Hyper-Local Daily Deal Reporting Program, designed to help providers improve the revenue and profits of local and regional Daily Deal programs.

Source: PR Newswire

China’s 99Bill Launches e-payment Platform and Mobile Payment Strategy

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99Bill, China’s leading independent third-party payment service provider, joined with its partners recently in Beijing to launch its new ’99Bill+’ payment platform and announce its strategy for mobile payments. The event was attended by over 100 guests, including banking partners, operators, device manufacturers, merchant partners, as well as industry analysts and the media.

’99Bill+’ is a collaborative and open platform that integrates the company’s existing expert personnel, products and services, which help customers improve capital efficiency, with the addition, or ‘+’, of participation by partners, merchants and users. Through an open and collaborative platform, ’99Bill+’ offers a seamless linking of the end-user’s back-end payment system and 99Bill’s front-end e-commerce platform. This enables clients to embed all kinds of new and innovative applications aimed at improving user experience and speeding up the growth of their business. The following are a few facts about each of our three ‘+’ factors:

  • Partners: 99Bill has put great emphasis on developing its industry chain and has over 80 banking or financial institutions with over 300 access points.
  • Merchants: 99Bill has over 1.1 million merchant partners that span 20 industries, including travel business, insurance, online shopping, logistics, clothing and education, etc.. 99Bill was the first to provide these merchant partners with innovative services like no-card credit card payment, large-amount online payment support and IVR voice payment.
  • Users: The ’99Bill+’ platform is meant to be a quick and easy tool that covers all kinds of payment devices and media used across a range of payment scenarios so that users have the best experience possible when making a transaction.

With the growth of 3G, a great deal of e-commerce has gone mobile. Recognizing this trend, 99Bill has reallocated resources to form a new strategy that puts each of the ‘+ factors’ of ’99Bill+’ at its core – partners, merchants and users – integrating them into a mobile payment ecosystem that provides overarching support for all their needs.

During the announcement, 99Bill also revealed a new mobile payment product that supports multiple operating systems and turns the user’s mobile phone into a portable POS device to carry out remote payment, mobile receipt of incoming funds, management of incoming funds for SMEs and P2P payments. At the same time, 99Bill released a new form of ‘mobile payment middleware’ that can be seamlessly integrated into client applications, allowing users to finish payment on the same interface as the initial purchase was made, which greatly simplifies the payment process and results in more successful payments.

99Bill CEO Oliver Kwan said, “e-Commerce is driving the development of specialization and cooperation throughout the entire industry chain. This will ultimately lower costs and improve the level of service. It has also resulted in the emergence of an open, integrated and coordinated industry ecosystem in which 99Bill is using its technological advantages, in partnership with others in the industry, to develop innovative financial services that can better serve our clients.”

Analysts see 99Bill’s decision to launch ’99Bill+’ platform with mobile payment strategy at this time as a clear signal that the company has shown clear core competitiveness and positioning that puts it in a leading position in the e-payment industry since 99Bill won multiple PBoC payment licenses.

Source: PR Newswire

Telcos to Become Banks as Mobile Payments Rise?

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Canadian mobile carrier Rogers has filed to become a bank under Canada’s federal Bank Act, which will allow it to pursue more mobile payment services and a “niche credit card opportunity” for consumers, a Rogers spokesman told CBC.

While it may look odd at first, perhaps banking could be the next stop for carriers. They already handle a lot of payments from consumers and have long-term billing relationships with users. [Read more…]