Vodafone partners with Visa for Mobile Payment service (UK)
Vodafone and Visa have announced a worldwide partnership to enable consumers to pay for goods and services using their mobile phones instead of coins and banknotes.
According to a report by the company, the companies will work together to develop a Vodafone-branded proposition that will be offered to consumers across Vodafone’s 398 million customer base in more than 30 countries across five continents, enabled by Visa’s outstanding payment network, product suite and brand. The partnership, the largest of its kind between a global payment network and mobile operator, combines the companies’ global reach and expertise to bring Visa payment functionality to consumers around the world.
The new Vodafone mobile payment proposition announced with Visa will be based on the Visa prepaid account and offered to consumers in partnership with Visa Issuers. The service will initially be launched in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and the UK, starting in the coming financial year. Other countries within Vodafone’s global portfolio will follow.
In addition to the Vodafone-branded stored value account inside the mobile wallet, Vodafone and Visa will work together to enable Visa Issuers for mobile payments globally. The platform will be open to all partners of all relevant industries, including financial institutions, retailers, transport and utility companies to host their services within an innovative new Vodafone mobile wallet.
Vittorio Colao, Group Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone, said that the Vodafone mobile wallet represents the next stage of the smartphone revolution. It offers customers the speed, simplicity and convenience of managing their everyday transactions with a single wave or tap of their smartphone, using innovative and reliable services developed by Vodafone and Visa – technology and providers they can trust. Further, the mobile wallet will be open to any service provider and they are committed to enable all partners to provide their joint customers the richest service portfolio possible.
In developed countries across Europe, North America and Australia, with a mature infrastructure for electronic payments, users of the Vodafone stored value account will be able to make purchases at the-point-of sale using Near Field Communications (NFC) enabled smartphones equipped with Visa payWave for mobile, Visa’s fast and secure mobile payment technology. By simply waving their smartphone in front of a payment terminal, consumers will be able to make simple, every day purchases such as bus and train tickets, newspapers, magazines or a morning coffee. Consumers will also be able to make high value purchases securely using a passcode.
Peter Ayliffe, CEO, Visa Europe, said that their partnershipwith Vodafone represents a huge stride forward for mobile payments. Visa’s future of payments initiative is more than just a promise, these services are real, tangible and coming to the mainstream consumer market in the very near future. Any Visa Issuer across these key markets will be able to work with Visa and Vodafoneto enable mobile payments for their customers, backed by all the security, trust and global acceptance the Visa brand represents.
John Partridge, President, Visa Inc ., claims that the convergence of global payment networks, such as VisaNet, with leading mobile telecommunication networks, such as Vodafone, has the potential to transform the way people pay and get paid the world over. Visa’s relationship with Vodafone will assist financial institutions in both developed and developing countries to offer Visa-quality payments to new and existing account holders.
Google plans to trail mobile payments this summer
Google is planning to start the trails of an NFC based mobile payment service in New York and San Francisco by the middle of the year, as moves to support mobile payments gains traction from operators and handset manufacturers.
According to sources, Google will pay for the installation of thousands of special cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems to accept transactions from NFC enabled smartphones.
Google added NFC capabilities to its most recent release of the Andoid OS, although it was reported that Apple might decide to wait until next year before adding NFC capabilities to its iPhone handsets.
Google’s mobile-payment service would face competition from EBay’s PayPal and ISIS, a joint effort of several mobile companies. The ISIS system, backed by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, will rely on Discover Financial Services to handle the payments.
Telenor Serbia introduces mobile payment service
Serbian mobile network operator, Telenor has introduced a new mobile payment service called PlatiMo. The service will allow customers to pay their bills and perform other financial services via their mobile phones directly from their bank accounts. It is based on G&D’s SIM cards and SmartTrust Over-the-Air (OTA) server software along with Halcom’s mobile payment system.
The Telenor mobile payments scheme has so far attracted the involvement of four banks: Komercijalna bank, Erste Bank, Credit Agricole and Raiffeisen Bank. These four banks between them serve more than 50% of the Serbian market.
Telenor and the partner banks are currently in discussions with merchants and are eager for them to join the scheme as quickly as possible.
For now, subscribers can pay mobile phone bills issued by Telenor, send money to other PlatiMo users, make online purchases, buy airplane tickets via the call centre of Serbia’s largest national air company JAT Airways and top up their prepaid accounts in the Telenor network.
In addition, all PlatiMo users will have access to e-government services through the scheme and will be able to order personal documents, such as birth or citizenship certificates.
France Telecom plans to expand mobile payment service in Africa
France Telecom is planning to expand its mobile payment services across Africa, as part of a wider plan to double revenue in Africa and the Middle East over the next five years.
According to the company, it has teamed up with Equity Bank Ltd to launch Orange Money in Kenya, after having launched the service in Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Mobile payment services offer an enormous potential in Africa, where less than 10% of the population has a bank account, while almost half of the population has a mobile phone.
According to Marc Rennard, Executive Vice-President in charge of Africa, Middle East and Asia, France Telecom wants to expand such services into other African markets in 2011 in partnership with banks and aims to double the amount of Orange Money clients to around two million by next summer from one million at the end of November.
The company has also announced that it will open a new center to focus on the development of new products and services in Abidjan, Ivory Coast by the end of the year.
As per Rennard, at the end of this year, France Telecom aims to have around US$5.51 billion of revenue in emerging markets, up from US$4.68 billion in 2009.
Helio Signs up for Obopay
Following in the footsteps of its MVNO rival Amp’d Mobile, Helio has inked a deal to provide Obopay’s mobile payment service to its customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Obopay’s service facilitates various m-commerce functions, such as sharing money with friends and transferring funds using a mobile device, as well as making physical payments at merchant sites. The service also is linked to an Obopay Prepaid MasterCard account.
Helio members can remotely manage their Obopay accounts to check balances, view payment histories and add funds.
In mid-October, Amp’d Mobile announced it had signed a deal to gain access to the Obopay service as well.
In an effort to get the company’s offering a boost, Obopay recently signed a partnership with contactless payment solutions provider ViVOtech that enables Obopay users to access the ViVOwallet to pay for retail goods using their near field communications (NFC) mobile devices at a ViVOtech point-of-sale device, which are currently at more than 160,000 retail outlets.
In March, Obopay landed $10 million in funding, which at the time the company said it planned to use to launch its mobile payment service in the United States.
Source- wirelessweek Wireless Mobile Telecom
