Mobile Payment Magazine

Report: Mobile Wallets in the US – Review and Analysis

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Mobile Wallets US ReportA new report entitled Mobile Wallets: The U.S. Landscape by Mercator Advisory Group identifies U.S. mobile wallets by category and technology.

The physical wallet might someday go the way of the checkbook, used by few and no longer a necessity. Growing consumer use of smartphones is creating a market for mobile wallets capable of serving many of the same purposes physical wallets served for centuries but now are able to take advantage of a plethora of new functions made possible in an increasingly digital marketplace. [Read more…]

Mobile Industry Predictions Report: 2012

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The Yankee Group has just released its free 17-page 2012 Annual Predictions Report, which looks into what the future has in store for the ever-growing mobility landscape.

Overview:

The world is in transition and in the year ahead, mobile will be both the protagonist and the subject of this instability. During the last five years, networks and the information they carry have plugged more than 2 billion new participants into the mobile economy. The winners in this landscape will be those players that can scale quickly and treat each user as a unique customer.

Report Highlights:

  • The mobile gold rush is global in scale a and touches all customers. In the last five years, 2 billion new users joined the mobile revolution. Looking ahead, mobile workers and consumers will embrace tablets, mobile content and personal cloud services. At the infrastructure level, the operator imperative to monetize all-IP networks will drive investment in policy solutions.
  • Asia-Pacific takes the lead in tablet sales. Yankee Group forecasts U.S. tablet sales will total 17 million in 2011 and almost 25 million in 2012. Similarly, tablet sales in all of Europe will exceed 15 million in 2011 and reach more than 26 million in 2012. And tablet sales in the Asia-Pacific region will total 20 million this year and reach almost 39 million in 2012, more than 50 percent above the U.S.
  • Diameter signaling is taking off. Yankee Group has seen significant request for proposal/request for information (RFP/RFI) activity and expects spending on IP-based Diameter signaling to more than double between 2011 and 2012—growing from U.S.$22 million to U.S.$45 million. And overall, we see the market mushrooming to U.S.$212 million in 2015, for a whopping CAGR of 57.2 percent.
  • Personal cloud services are hitting the high-growth phase. We forecast 17 percent of professionals with three or more devices will adopt a personal cloud service for online storage, backup and synching.
  • Economic woes threaten operators. Western European operators will see churn increase from approximately 2.3 percent per month today to 2.4 percent by the end of 2012, despite operators’ ongoing efforts to migrate customers to postpaid services and long-term contracts linked to new smartphone purchases. The world is in transition and in the year ahead, mobile will be both the protagonist and the subject of this instability. During the last five years, networks and the information they carry have plugged more than 2 billion new participants into the mobile economy. The winners in this landscape will be those players that can scale quickly and treat each user as a unique customer.

For more information and to download the report: 2012 Annual Predictions Report: Mobile

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

Tyfone, Inc.

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Tyfone provides a turnkey infrastructure software on the phone, middleware platform, and a memory card based token for the secure element/contactless payments/NFC.

The company’s product combines e a smart card chip secure element, an NFC chip, and a miniature antenna provisioned to a memory card that works in any standard memory card slot. This solution enables device independence in an issuer-centric model allowing the issuer to control both the channel and customer. Tyfone connects money and mobility in a secure, scalable and flexible mobile financial services platform that is tailored to meet the evolving needs of organizations and their customers.

Founded in 2004, Tyfone’s corporate headquarters are in Portland, Oregon, and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Bangalore, India. The company has manufacturing relationships in Taiwan and component partners in Israel, Germany, and Singapore.

The company is venture backed by Ojas Venture Partners, an early stage technology focused Venture Capital firm based in India.

The management team is comprised of leaders from the financial services and technology industries. Tyfone’s vision is to enable Device and Carrier Independence for mobile financial services to the world’s leading organizations.

More information: Tyfone, Inc.