2011 Mobile Money Forum – Event Summary
The 2nd annual Mobile Money Forum hosted by Neotelis took place earlier this week on June 21st and 22nd at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Montreal.  The folks at Neotelis did a fabulous job of pulling together key participants from within the Canadian Mobile Money ecosystem as well as experts from other parts of the world. 
The conference spanned two full days and covered key Mobile Money topics including Mobile Commerce, Mobile & Contactless Payments, Mobile Wallets, and Mobile Money Transfer.
The following are some common themes that arose in several of the sessions:

• Mobile Contactless Payments (proximity payments) are still 1-2 years out.  Much work has been done and several of the pieces are falling into place, but the ecosystem to support mobile contactless payments has not been completely flushed out at this point
• Consumers don’t fully understand the concept of a Mobile Wallet or the value that it will bring to them.  The value proposition for consumers needs to be very clear and well-communicated in order to initiate a change in consumer behavior
• The

As you may have seen, the date for Mobile Money Canada 2010 has been set for September 21st and our plans for the event are in full gear!  We have already received an overwhelming response from interested attendees and are quickly filling spots, so if you're hoping to attend the event this year, please register early to avoid disappointment.  You can submit your registration here.

In an effort to once again cover a wide array of applicable topics and draw upon practical experience from across the industry, we are reaching out to interested parties to submit a speaking proposal at this year's event.  This past year has shown significant progress in the mobile money industry, both within and outside of Canada.  If your company has been actively leading the way, or has been involved in mobile money deployments, we would love to hear from you so that we can discuss how to showcase your solution and experience.

The Mobile Money Canada 2010 conference

In response to my previous blog '5 Common Challenges in Testing a Mobile Money Transfer Solution', I received several emails about challenges and hurdles that others have encountered while performing testing of their mobile money transfer solutions.  Thanks to all that took the time to share their experience!  Below are 2 additional recurring themes that came out of the responses that I received.  These may prove helpful to those of you who are in the heat of delivery.  The first one builds upon one of my previous items, but it further illustrates the particular challenge in such a tricky integration effort.

 1)  Integration with the MNO - Many MNO's don't allow special characters in the USSD response message, and the error messages one might receive aren't necessarily indicative of this.  For example, when the system requests an address or a recipient name, the user may enter a special character such as an apostrophe.  

2) Handset limitations - It is a rare case, but some handsets may not support USSD.  It is imperative to understand the full gamut of handsets in use by the set of users, and to understand their limitations.  Another example of handset

Over the recent few weeks, I have been asked for my thoughts on some of the most common challenges or hurdles to overcome during the testing phase of a Mobile Money Transfer Solution deployment.  As such, I thought that many of you would benefit from this list as well.

As most of you know, a mobile money transfer solution is made up of several applications and back-office systems working together to deliver the service literally into the hands of the customer.  As such, many of the testing complexities stem from this very fact; at it's most basic level, mobile money transfer is a complex system integration project.

Challenge #1: Creation and maintenance of Test Data

The testing data that will be used for end-to-end system testing must be well-planned and communicated in advance so that all of the appropriate accounts and entities can be established within each participating system.  For example, the mWallet CRM system must contain customer account data corresponds with valid accounts at the partner

A company named 'MyScreen' recently landed a deal with Latin America's largest mobile operator, America Movil to launch an advertising service with carriers in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.  MyScreen provides a service that shows a full-screen mobile advertisement each time a subscriber completes a call.  The user can click on the ad to learn more or press 'End' to exit the advertisement.  For viewing the ad, the subscriber will be rewarded (e.g.. 10 Free Text Messages for every ad viewed), therefore providing an incentive to view as many ads as possible.  The MyScreen platform has the ability to impose limits to prevent abuse, and the rewards can be catered based on the specific market.  

The overall model is quite simple - Advertisers enter into a deal with MyScreen who distributes the advertisements to subscribers of the carriers with whom they have contracts.  Each party receives a cut of the money spent by the advertiser, and the subscriber is rewarded for viewing the ad.

Verizon has just announced that it will enter the mobile payments space by offering its consumers the ability to pay for online goods and content by effectively 'billing' the items to their mobile phone account.  All items purchased in this manner will appear on their post-paid phone bill, which they will pay as per current processes.  Verizon is offering the service through Danal Inc's BilltoMobile payment service, providing Verizon's customers with immediate access to content and goods sold through Danal's network of eCommerce merchant partners.

With Verizon entering this space, providing this form of payments to their large customer base, this form of mobile payments will truly be put to the test.  Success will certainly lead to the following:

a) Other MNO's will see the revenue opportunity and will look at providing the same or similar service to their customers

b) Expansion of this service to the pre-paid subscriber base

c) An increased monthly spending limit (currently, it is limited to $25 / month)

Many of you have likely seen that Target recently announced the launch of their mobile coupon program, enabling consumers to view and redeem coupons using their mobile phone.  While it will take some time to determine the relative success of this initiative, one thing is certain - the roll-out of mobile coupons by a large retailer such as Target will help to push Mobile Coupons into a mainstream adoption phase for consumers.  Hopefully, the user experience is positive since it will no doubt influence consumer perceptions of mobile coupons in general.  Other retailers will no doubt follow suit and roll out their own mobile coupon solutions in the coming months.  Not all though will be as extensive as what Target has rolled out.  Target has in essence created their own coupon 'site', whereby their customers will browse a specific mobile site for Target coupons.  The customer will select a specific coupon and redeem it by allowing the cashier to scan the barcode from their phone.  This type of solution may make sense for a large retailer such as Target since they carry a large variety of

While at the GSMA MWC the other week, I had the opportunity to check out two of the new mobile platforms that were unveiled - Samsung's Bada, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.  Both platforms looked to be quite impressive, and I'm certain that their release has created much excitement amongst developers that are eager to get started on building new apps for these platforms.  However, while the release of new platforms is exciting to some, I'm almost certain that it spells nightmare and confusion for those on the business side that are looking to reach a wide target market through mobile applications and solutions.  With the sheer number of app stores that have followed from Apple's, and the number of platforms being introduced, it's only natural for one to be overwhelmed.  

Also revealed at the GSMA is that several mobile operators have banded together to introduce a joint application platform with the goal to create application standards that will enable developers to create apps that will work across a wide variety of phones.  

A standardized

Up until now, the question has been "How can a mobile operator help me accept payments from mobile subscribers"? Collecting payments for applications & services via operator billing systems has always been an attractive proposition for application & service providers since it leverages the operator's existing relationship with the customer, and simplifies the process for all parties involved.   However, the thought of attempting to integrate with even one operator can be overwhelming in itself, let alone looking at integrating with the multiple operators required in order to truly enable this form of payment within a given region.  

Some businesses such as Zong have managed to perform the integration to several different operators over a long period of time, and use this as the basis of their product offering.  See: 

http://zong.com/zong/coverage.gsp

Enter OneAPI.  The premise of OneAPI is to provide application developers with a set of common, lightweight and web-friendly API's that enable easy access to mobile operator network capabilities.  Currently, developers need to work with each operator's specific API's in order to leverage capabilities such as payment, messaging, and location.  OneAPI will simplify things for the developers and will drive increased usage of these operator services.  

As many of you already know, it has been confirmed. Google will be releasing its own smartphone – due to hit the market in the new year.  Google has decided to bring the phone to market outside the constraints of a particular carrier.  They will sell it as an unlocked phone, creating a freedom of choice in mobile service that is rare amongst North American consumers who purchase smartphones.  So what does this mean for the operators? 

With Google taking the first step that some are dubbing as ‘risky’, it will be interesting to see how this changes consumer behaviour and their attitudes towards long-term contracts with carriers (the contracts enable consumers to save money on the purchase of an expensive handset).  Furthermore, will this set a precedent for other parties such as Apple, RIM, and the like who could potentially benefit from bringing an unlocked phone to market?

The key to success in this approach is the set of services that are offered or made available on the phone.  Applications or services enabling the use of VoIP calling over WiFi and tethering of devices will certainly make an expensive smartphone worth the while if consumers can see the long-term savings and