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.
Mobile Money Crosses Borders: New Remittance Models in West Africa
A promising new model is emerging for cross-border remittances with mobile money as both the sending and the receiving channel.
This paper from GSMA draws commercial insights from two early examples in the West African Economic Monetary Union (WAEMU), where member states are socio-economically integrated and adoption of mobile money has been rapid in recent years. These factors make the region a natural starting point for this model. [Read more…]
FIME
FIME advances end-to-end transaction solutions and mobile services, enabling market security and interoperability.
As an independent worldwide leader in consulting and testing services, FIME ensures the compliance of mobile devices and chip-based applications to industry standards. Its international team works with manufacturers, banks and authorities within the EMV payments, mobile near field communication (NFC), telecom, transport and e-identity sectors. [Read more…]
Digital Money in Pakistan – 2013 Report
This report by Shift Thought Ltd entitled “Digital Money in Pakistan” has been designed specifically for the use of global players such as banks, operators and technology providers. They fill a gap in the market, and although offered at a report price, this is not a run-of-the-mill paper report.
This Pakistan report is developed to a high specification in order to help experts including development organisations like CGAP, by providing little known information and detailed analysis as a one-stop reference to understand Payments Systems and Innovations in this market. [Read more…]
Driving Customer Usage of Mobile Money for the Unbanked
The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona hosted a Working Group for its “Mobile Money for the Unbanked” program. The group has now release a new report the outlines strategies for building the customer base of mobile money users.
The report, entitled “Driving Customer Usage of Mobile Money for the Unbanked” differentiates the marketing methods for airtime versus mobile money. From the MMU Blog, Neil Davidson writes:
“The report considers the many nuances of marketing mobile money. A key theme of the article is that marketing mobile money is very different from marketing airtime. Indeed, the customer journey for mobile money from unawareness to regular use is long and requires a number of inputs: customers need to not only be informed that the service exists, but also convinced that it could solve a problem in their lives and educated about how it works. We discuss tactics that marketers can employ when customers get stuck along this journey, such as when they have registered but fail to transact, and we have included a diagnostic as a supplement to the article to help operators diagnose and rectify such issues among their potential customer base. The article includes 27 mini-case studies about effective—and some less effective—mobile money marketing tactics, and we are grateful to the many mobile operators and other mobile money providers who agreed to share their experiences with the broader industry.”
The 33-page report (PDF) is available for download.
See full report (PDF): Driving Customer Usage of Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Source: MMU Blog
Major Mobile Operators Worldwide Announce Commitment to NFC Technology
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.
Record Attendance at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona
The GSMA today reported that more than 60,000* visitors from 200 countries attended the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress, marking a record for the mobile industry’s premier event. The four-day conference and exhibition attracted executives from the world’s largest and most influential mobile operators, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies and media and entertainment organisations, as well as government delegations. 51 per cent of this year’s Mobile World Congress attendees hold C-level positions, including more than 3,000 CEOs.
“The record attendance to this year’s Mobile World Congress is indicative of the impact and importance of mobile in not only technology and telecommunications, but across nearly all facets of the private and public sectors,” stated John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA Ltd. “Mobile truly is leading a transformation in how the world communicates, how business is conducted and how people live their lives. We are very proud of the contribution that the GSMA and the Mobile World Congress have in furthering this transformation.”
The 2011 Congress hosted nearly 1,400 exhibiting companies and occupied more than 58,600 net square metres of exhibition and business meeting space. More than 2,900 international print, Web and broadcast media attended the event to analyse and report on the many significant industry announcements made at the Congress.
Mobile World Congress: Unparalleled Conference Program
During the event, CEOs from companies including America Movil, AT&T, China Mobile, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Google, HTC, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), SoftBank, Telefonica, Twitter, Vodafone, Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), WPP and Yahoo!, discussed and debated the trends and issues which are shaping the mobile industry today and into the future. In addition to the keynote programme, the Mobile World Congress conference covered a range of topics, such as applications, mobile advertising, mobile money, mobile health, embedded mobile, cloud computing, network capacity and next-generation network technologies, among many others.
Developers Descend on App Planet
There were more than 45,000 visits to App Planet, a focused event designed to bring together the many critical elements of the broad mobile application ecosystem together in one location. Companies including developerprogram.com, HP, IMGA, Microsoft, Mobile {Dev}Sync, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, WAC and Wireless Industry Partnership each held application developer conferences (ADCs), and App Planet also hosted Macworld Mobile, a developer event targeting Apple iOS developers. App Planet included the Mobile Cloud Forum, sponsored by Cisco, HP, Huawei and NEC, and the LTE Forum, sponsored by Huawei, NEC, Syniverse and ZTE. Overall, more than 12,000 developers attended Mobile World Congress this year.
Unprecedented Attendance by the World’s Government Delegations
The GSMA’s Ministerial Programme also boasted record attendance, with government delegations from 131 countries meeting in Barcelona, an increase of 50% over 2010. Sponsored this year by Saudi Telecom (Platinum Sponsor), Huawei and Qualcomm (Gold Sponsors), the GSMA’s Ministerial Programme is a unique invitation-only event gathering ministers, regulators and CEOs from across the mobile industry for a series of in-depth strategic, policy and regulatory discussions in high-level summits and bilateral meetings.
Mobile World Congress 2012
“The GSMA is committed to holding the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona through 2012,” continued Hoffman. “We thank the city of Barcelona, the Government of Catalonia, Fira de Barcelona and all our Barcelona partners for supporting and contributing to such an amazing event, and we look forward to returning to the city next year.”
Dates for the 2012 Mobile World Congress are 27 February – 1 March, 2012.
For more information on the 2011 Mobile World Congress, visit www.mobileworldcongress.com.
Mobile Operators Call For Openness As Data Load Rises
The surging data traffic across the globe creates significant opportunities for mobile operators, but the industry also needs to focus on a number of key priorities, including greater openness, a number of operators said Tuesday.
In a keynote speech at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, industry organization GSMA’s Chief Executive Robert Conway said there are likely to be around one billion mobile broadband connections by 2012.
via Wall Street Journal.
BilltoMobile Demonstrates Mobile Payments Via GSMA’s OneAPI Gateway
BilltoMobile, a leading provider of mobile payments for online purchases in the United States, has announced that it has been selected by the GSMA as a demonstration partner to showcase how mobile payments can be made in the United States via the GSMA’s OneAPI Gateway. The demonstration at the GSMA Mobile World Congress this week will illustrate how the BilltoMobile payment gateway can be connected to the GSMA OneAPI Gateway, allowing online merchant sites and developers to enable mobile payments to 65 per cent of all U.S. wireless subscribers.
BilltoMobile’s secure payment gateway is directly connected to the top two U.S. carriers’ billing, authentication and customer care systems. Purchases take seconds to complete, require no pre-registration or special hardware, and have no association with credit or bank cards. Purchases appear directly on the subscriber’s wireless bill, with no interest charges or subscriber fees of any kind.
“We’re very pleased to be working with BilltoMobile to demonstrate how we can expand the reach of the GSMA OneAPI Gateway to include mobile payment capabilities throughout North America,” said Graham Trickey, Senior Director at the GSMA. “BilltoMobile’s low-cost, robust and secure mobile payment gateway has allowed us to extend the reach of the GSMA OneAPI payment service and to enable the services that people really want in a clear, simple and secure way.”
BilltoMobile launched the United States’ first Direct Mobile Billing (DMB) service for Verizon Wireless’ subscribers in May 2010, attracting a number of prominent online game companies, and a wide range of digital goods and services merchants that offer the BilltoMobile payment option on their web sites. In October 2010, BilltoMobile launched its same proprietary DMB service in partnership with AT&T. Today, BilltoMobile is the only mobile payments company in the U.S. with direct-to-carrier billing agreements with two top U.S. carriers —reaching over 180 million U.S. mobile payment-capable subscribers.
Denise Archer, VP Carrier Partnerships, BilltoMobile, said, “We are very proud to be part of the GSMA OneAPI initiative, supporting the organization in reaching its ease-of-access goals, and demonstrating how quickly and easily we can expand the reach of the current GSMA OneAPI Gateway to offer mobile payments to their merchants in the United States.”
San Jose-based BilltoMobile is a privately held U.S. company that is providing Direct Mobile Billing to carriers in North America. BilltoMobile’s strategic partner, Danal Co., Ltd (Seoul, So. Korea), has integrated its financial-grade Direct Mobile Billing service with 14 carriers in Korea, Taiwan and China.
Source: Marketwire
Payfone
Payfone brings payment processing, telco, and web 2.0 expertise to mobile commerce. The company has rebuilt mobile commerce using their unique intellectual property, and established strategic partnerships with leading telco network operators.
Payfone is a member of the GSMA and is based in New York, NY. [Read more…]
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