Mobile phones have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting, and shopping. Given the rapid pace of developments in the area of mobile finance, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting annual surveys of consumers’ use of mobile financial services in 2011. This 78-page report, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services” (March, 2015) examines trends in the adoption and use of mobile banking, payments, and shopping behavior and how the emergence of mobile financial services affects consumers’ interaction with financial institutions.
Telcos to Become Banks as Mobile Payments Rise?
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…]
Best of 4G Awards Nomination Deadline Extended
The Best of 4G Awards nomination deadline has been extended to Sept. 16, 2011
Do you have a product, service or network innovation worthy of recognition? 4G World invites you to submit a nomination today.
The Best of 4G Awards recognize the best of the best within the wireless and mobile supply ecosystem.
The awards are open to all. Final selection of winners will be made by an independent award selection committee and a special Best in Show at 4G World Award will be voted on by conference attendees. Winners will be announced at the 4G World Meet the Press & VIP Party on Oct. 24, 2011.
This year’s award categories are:
- BEST NEW MOBILE DEVICE
- MOST INNOVATIVE NETWORK DEPLOYMENT
- MOST INNOVATIVE NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE
- BEST MOBILE APPLICATION FOR SMARTPHONE OR TABLET
- BEST USER EXPERIENCE FOR MOBILE
- BEST MOBILE COMMERCE SOLUTION
- BEST OVERALL INNOVATION IN MOBILE
- BEST IN SHOW
To enter or learn more about the categories, visit: 4G World Awards Submission
Award submissions close Friday, Sept. 16, 2011
Source: 4G World
JunglePay
JunglePay is a streamlined mobile payment platform. With simple integration into a user’s website, mobile site or application, JunglePay allows charging for services via SMS payments, credit card and over the IVR payments (phone billing), and is customizable to fit the look of any site. JunglePay is fully internationalized in many major languages, and is a brand and solution of txtNation.
For more information on setting up mobile payments: JunglePay.com
Report Says ISIS to Invest $100M to Challenge Google Wallet
With summer days dwindling, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has less than two weeks to make good on its pledge to launch its Google Wallet mobile payment service.
Google Wallet is a mobile application service that will let owners of Sprint’s Samsung Nexus S 4G smartphones use their phone as a wallet at some 20 retailers and restaurants.
Bloomberg said the carrier group, which unveiled its own tap-and-pay effort in July, plans to invest $100 million to build out its mobile payment plans to challenge Wallet.
Read more, via eWeek.com.
VocaLink Launches Multi-channel Gateway to Enable Real-time Interbank Mobile Payment Services
VocaLink today announced the launch of their new multi-channel gateway product that enables banks to offer customers real-time, inter bank mobile payment services. The multi-channel gateway has been designed to work in conjunction with the VocaLink Immediate Payment solution, but can operate equally well with other payment services, such as the UK’s Faster Payments Service and the LINK network.
Central to VocaLink’s multi-channel gateway is a proxy database that has a look-up capability to associate a proxy such as a mobile phone number or email address to identify customer bank details and enables the payment to be completed. The proxy database ensures that the highest level of safety and security are adhered to, protecting the privacy of the bank and customers.
Marc Terry, Managing Director, Global Transaction Services at VocaLink said “The VocaLink multichannel gateway provides the final piece of the jigsaw that allows customers to initiate real time mobile payments just by supplying the beneficiary’s mobile phone number.”
Surce: VocaLink
Chinese Mobile Payment Company B.Shark Expands to Thailand Market
B.Shark, a Chinese company offering worldwide mobile payment solutions, is expanding its market to Thailand. The company’s mobile payment API covers the three major operators in Thailand: AIS, DTAC and TrueMove.
The number of mobile subscribers in Thailand exceeds 70 million, which is greater than the population–so each subscriber has more than one mobile phone on average.
According to the latest figures,the average revenue per user (ARPU) for Thailand operators has a fairly wide range. DTAC, which focuses on high-level business subscribers, has the highest ARPU at 286 THB, followed by AIS at 232 THB, and TrueMove at 112 THB. Most subscribers in Thailand will charge 50 THB each time, and the lowest value recharge card is 20 THB.
In terms of value-added services, the most popular content is music, especially the local music created by Thailand’s popular music singers. The second most popular content is mobile wallpaper. Smart phone owners are frequent users of social network applications. When it comes to games, Texas Poker is one of the most popular.
Chinese mobile payment solution provider, B.Shark, has already launched its global mobile payment API, supporting China-Phone OS, Android OS and also web-based computer social games. The API covers the three mobile operators in Thailand. All mobile game developers and mobile phone producers are free to download the API and integrate with their games or application.
Source: B.shark
Intuit GoPayment App to Be Offered by Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless and Intuit Inc. today announced a strategic alliance to give small businesses – from the sole proprietor to a medium-sized business – the ability to process credit card payments on smartphones and tablets.
The companies are now offering Intuit’s GoPayment app and pocket-sized credit card reader in Verizon Wireless’ 2,300 retail stores and business-to-business sales channels.GoPayment makes it easier and more affordable for small businesses to process credit cards and for anyone who sells products or services to accept credit card payments wirelessly. The card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a supported smartphone or tablet.
Credit and debit cards can be swiped through the card reader or entered into the app manually. The transaction is processed immediately and funds are automatically deposited into a user’s bank account within a few business days.
GoPayment supports devices on Android, BlackBerry and iOS platforms for most popular 3G and 4G LTE smartphones and tablets.
“Intuit’s GoPayment on America’s most reliable network is a mobile transaction game changer, and brings another dimension of must-have technology to the small business community,” said Mike Schaefer, executive director of the Business Solutions Group for Verizon Wireless.
“Payments and transactions are often the biggest hurdle businesses face. Our value proposition is to streamline, simplify and enable business owners to get paid with minimal delay. This collaboration with Intuit is an important part of our strategy to bring the most innovative online and mobile tools to our customers.”
“Rather than lose out on potential business, anyone who sells a product or service can now easily and affordably give their customers the option of paying with plastic,” said Chris Hylen, general manager of Intuit’s Payment Solutions division.
“GoPayment is meeting a huge need and is one of the fastest growing mobile payment solutions in the market. With Verizon Wireless, we’ll help even more people discover that they too can process credit card payments on the phones or tablets they already own.” To save time when processing payments, GoPayment offers the ability to create and sell from a list of frequently sold items. Depending on the types of goods and services sold, users can choose to apply sales tax, add tips and send customized receipts via text message and email with a map of where the transaction took place.
To protect data, sensitive credit card information is never stored on the phone. The data is also encrypted – once via the card reader and a second time via the GoPayment app.For the more than four million small businesses that use QuickBooks, GoPayment can also sync transactions with recent versions of QuickBooks – PC, Mac and soon QuickBooks Online – to save time by reducing manual data entry.
GoPayment also supports up to 50 users on one account, which is ideal for businesses with multiple employees who work in the field.
Source: PR Newswire
Mobile Money: CBN grants full license to United Bank of Africa’s U-Mo
The apex financial regulatory agency in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday August 18, 2011 granted UBA the final license to operate a mobile payment service known as U-Mo. The company, which was among the 7 licenses granted by the CBN had earlier been granted approval-in-principle by the apex bank last year, enabling the UBA Group to quickly deploy and commence full operations with the establishment of Afripay; its mobile banking subsidiary.
Speaking shortly after receiving the license in Abuja, Dr. Yinka Adedeji, Chief Executive Officer, Afripay, commended the CBN for its efforts in promoting cashless economy through mobile payment platforms that guarantees easiness and efficiency. According to him the granting of final license to Afri-Pay is a demonstration of technical, security, financial and business readiness .
“We are greatly encouraged by this development. It is a significant morale booster given that we have been ready for full operations since November, 2010. Various categories of customers including the banked and un-banked have begun to embrace our services,” Dr. Adedeji said. With a view to ensuring that all customer segments are covered by U-Mo, Dr Adedeji said Afripay has introduced a number of products including U-Mo Silver, U-Mo Gold and U-Mo Platimum.
“U-Mo Silver is for customers with very little information and it allows them to spend or pay up to N3,000.00 per transaction and up to N30,000.00 per day whilst U-Mo Gold is for customers with contact information and details. A U-Mo Gold customer is allowed to spend or pay up to N10,000.00 per transaction and up to N100,000.00 per day” he explained. U-Mo Platinum is for the more sophisticated customers who are allowed to spend or pay up to N100,000.00 per transaction and up to N1,000,000.00 per day. He said “to qualify for U-Mo Platinum you have to provide detailed information including a verified address and a reference”
Responding to enquiries on the features of U-Mo, the Afripay boss revealed that U-Mo provides higher level of security than cards, given that you require four-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) and possession of your mobile phone to perform any operation. Dr. Adedeji said that U-Mo Mobile money is available to all mobile subscribers irrespective of their mobile service provider i.e Glo, Etisalat, MTN, Airtel, etc just as it is available for those with or without bank accounts in UBA.
United Bank for Africa (UBA) is a leading Pan African financial services Group, with presence in 19 African countries, New York, London and Paris. Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria; UBA provides broad-based financial services to over seven (7) million customers across Africa.
“Apart from helping to bank the un-banked, we envisage that a lot of merchants in Nigeria will migrate to cashless payments using their mobile phones to complement the Point of Sales (POS) terminals” said Mr. Phillips Oduoza, GMD/CEO UBA.
Source: UBA Group
Chinese Company B.Shark to Extend Mobile Payment Offering to Physical Goods
Years ago, operator billing was only applied for value-added services such as ringtones, ring back tones, wallpaper, news, music, and the like. Later it was applied to other fields such as mobile games, game tools and the mobile application market. Now, operator billing is extending to more and more fields, including physical goods payments. B.Shark, a Chinese company offering worldwide mobile payment solutions, now plans to extend its offerings to physical goods payment.
Operators are concerned about being a communication/data channel only, so some operators are reducing operator revenue share, especially reducing their own revenue share when it comes to physical goods payments. That is to say, when customers pay for physical goods via operator billing, merchants will receive a higher revenue share than for virtual goods. This strategy will increase the competitive power of operators when competing with banks.
“B.Shark will launch a physical goods payment solution with the cooperation of an overseas e-commerce platform,” according to the marketing director of B.Shark.
Other mobile payment companies, such as Paypal, Boku and Zong, are also planning to cooperate with e-commerce platforms in the field of physical goods payments.
Source: B.Shark
Telefónica Germany, Telekom and Vodafone Plan “Mpass” Mobile Payment Company
Telefónica Germany, Telekom and Vodafone are pushing ahead with their joint activities in mobile payments. The three telecommunications providers intend to register their payment service mpass as a separate company, and have signed a letter of understanding to this effect. The new company is due to begin operating as early as this year.
More and more customers are taking advantage of convenient and secure payment via mobile or stationary internet from a mobile phone. Once the mobile payment scheme mpass is up and running, the three telecommunications providers plan to expand on their position in mobile payment. The new company will concentrate on stepping up distribution and marketing activities, as well as developing new products. Aided by new technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC), users will soon be able to make simple, secure and wireless payments in high-street shops, too.
“Payment by mobile phone will increasingly feature in our daily lives,” says Michiel van Eldik, Managing Director of Wholesale & Partner Management at Telefónica Germany. “It has actually been possible for several years. And the first NFC smartphones, with full functionality for all aspects of credit and bonus cards, are already in the stores. I think that even as early as next year, consumers will be leaving their credit cards at home and paying by mobile phone instead.”
“Queues at supermarket checkouts will soon be a thing of the past,” says Christian Illek, Director of Marketing at Telekom Deutschland, adding: “mpass will make mobile payment easier, faster and more secure than with conventional payment means. Within the mpass partnership we are not only applying the specific benefits of mobile phones in the payment market, but, more importantly, we are bundling our customer reach with that of our partners.”
Dr. Peter Walz, Member of the Management Board and Director of Wholesale & Strategy at Vodafone Deutschland: “For many years now we have offered an interoperable payment product across all networks with payments via the phone bill. This is now being continued in the shared mpass activities. Retailers want standardised solutions and that is what we are giving them with mpass.”
mpass is the mobile payment service of Telefónica Germany, Telekom and Vodafone. The service enables secure mobile and soon contactless payment for mobile phone users of all Germany’s networks. What is especially interesting is that sensitive customer data such as bank details are not sent to the trader as part of the purchase process. The payment order can only be authorised from the buyer’s mobile phone.
Source: Telefónica Germany