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News
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Airtel plans cash transfers across EA
February 2, 2012, 2:48 pm
Bharti Airtel has unveiled a mobile money platform in Uganda, which now
completes the technical process of linking its Tanzanian and Kenyan
outfits and set the stage for cross-border money transfer.
Mr
Michael Okwiri, the vice president for Corporate Communication at Airtel
Africa, said this week that the firm was in the process of creating a
seamless money transfer service across Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.
“We
have applied to the relevant authorities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
and are awaiting for regulatory approvals,” said Mr Okwiri.
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Who Needs a Bank Branch When You've Got a Mobile Phone?
February 2, 2012, 2:26 pm
There's a great deal of discussion and debate around what will
ultimately happen to banking as a result of the massive changes in
connectivity, utility, mobility and customer experience taking place
right now. One thing is for sure, the world is changing, and fast.
We see PayPal owning online payments, with others like Stripe hot on their tails.
Square is attempting to disrupt the POS and circumvent the existing payments rails by going cardless.
Simple and Movenbank are vying for the new definition of the 'bank account.'
Telcos, like Rogers, are applying for banking licenses, and ISYS is
pitching head-to-head with banks for mobile
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Mobile Banking Guidance May Be Forthcoming
February 2, 2012, 11:53 am
In response to the increased use of mobile banking applications
among consumers, financial services industry regulators may soon
release new guidance on how banks and other organizations should go
about leveraging this trend, according to BankInfoSecurity.
The use of mobile banking applications may be included in a
forthcoming update to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination
Council's Authentication Guidance. However, the news provider reported,
industry regulators are still getting up to speed when it comes to the
emerging mobile space.
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Vodafone to introduce loan repayment, money transfer services soon
February 2, 2012, 11:38 am
As a part of its plan to
move beyond voice services, Vodafone is focusing on data and m-commerce.
Services including loan repayments and money transfer through the
mobile platform would see the light of the day during later part of this
year, senior company official said.
“All our initiatives are meant to take us beyond voice. Even when
Vittorio (Vittorio Colao, CEO of the Vodafone group) came down to India
recently, he had disclosed that data and m-commerce would be our focus
areas for growth. The key drivers are the facts that we have vast
experience on both in other parts
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Turkcell Launches World's First SIM-Based, Mobile, Contactless Road Toll Payment with its Smartphone: T11
February 2, 2012, 11:32 am
Turkcell
TKC
+0.53%
(ise:TCELL), the leading communications and technology company today
launched the world's first SIM-based, Near Field Technology ("NFC") road
toll payment application on its own branded smartphone T11, in
collaboration with Bank Asya. Currently only applicable on Turkcell's
T11, the system eliminates the need for plastic transmission cards (KGS)
when crossing bridges and freeway turnpikes. Turkcell subscribers with
a T11 can easily request a Bank Asya KGS application and upload cash
through the Cep-T Cüzdan (mobile wallet) application on their mobile
phones without having to physically visit a bank or payment point at the
turnpikes.
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With Square card reader, T-Mobile lets ‘cash-only’ shops take plastic
January 31, 2012, 2:26 pm
T-Mobile is the first wireless carrier to offer the Square credit card readerfrom San Francisco-based Square in its stores. The readers are already available at retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Apple stores, and T-Mobile has previously been selling the readers in 4G smartphone bundles for businesses, according to The Washington Post
T-Mobile says the reader will be a bonus for small businesses because it can make it easier and faster to get paid from shoppers using their credit cards. The Square reader lets small businesses take credit card payments using the mobile card reader attached to their iPhones, iPads or
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IBM acquires Worklight, eyes mobile device management
January 31, 2012, 2:21 pm
IBM said Tuesday it is acquiring privately held Worklight, an Israeli company that makes smartphone and tablet software.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the Worklight acquisition illustrates IBM’s larger push into the mobile space from development, management, security and commerce.
Worklight features a platform that can deliver new and existing mobile apps to multiple devices and secure the connections with the enterprise. Worklight makes mobile development, middleware and management tools.
In a statement, IBM touted its software to connect mobile apps, secure them and manage devices. Add it up and IBM is looking to be a major
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Starbucks Says It's Number One in World in Mobile Payments
January 31, 2012, 2:13 pm
Schultz was speaking last week at a post-earnings conference call with Wall Street Analysts (transcript on Seeking Alpha).
Almost 4 million people hold the Starbucks Card, the CEO stated, and one of every four people are buying with the loyalty card.
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OBOPAY DEBUTS MOBILE-PAYMENT SERVICE IN UGANDA
January 31, 2012, 2:03 pm
There is growing demand for mobile payments in Uganda, where Warid Pesa provides a prepaid account that enables customers to perform e-money transactions, pay for goods and services as well as settle accounts.
Warid Pesa is based on Obopay's open and interoperable mobile-money solutions, which now support millions of customers globally for some of the world’s largest brands. Obopay says its platform enables a comprehensive range of use-cases that drive incremental transactions and revenue, providing a bridge between new and existing payment technologies. The service enables new channels of distribution for offering financial services that are useful in areas with income
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Luup wins Leaders in Innovation Award
January 31, 2012, 2:00 pm
LONDON, Jan 31, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE)
Luup has been announced as the winner of the Financial-i Leaders in Innovation Award for 'Most Innovative New Mobile Corporate Banking'. This confirms Luup's mobile payment offerings are at the forefront of innovative financial solutions today. The award is even more significant as entries are nominated and judged by independent market experts rather than relying on self-nomination.
"The Leaders in Innovation awards recognise companies that demonstrate an ongoing commitment and investment in innovation, which positively impacts end users. Luup exemplifies this," explained Anita Hawser, editor of Financial-i. "The panel was particularly impressed with
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IMF Faults Regional Banks on Financial Inclusions
January 30, 2012, 2:37 pm
Through a working paper dubbed 'Assessing Bank Competition within the East African Community' that aims at estimating the degree of competition in the EAC banking systems, the IMF challenged new entrants for not taking the advantage to include the large number of the unbanked population.
Despite large numbers of financial exclusions, the IMF says that new entrants into the market in recent years show there are no regulatory barriers per se to competition in the banking system of the EAC countries
It comes when more than half of the population in Rwanda and Tanzania has no access to financial
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FIS and mFoundry Strengthen Strategic Relationship
January 30, 2012, 2:34 pm
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- mFoundry, the fastest-growing provider of mobile banking and payments solutions, today announced that it has strengthened its strategic relationship with FIS(TM), the world's largest provider of banking and payments technology.
With a recent investment, FIS increased its ownership holdings in mFoundry. The two companies have been working together on mobile banking solutions for the past several years, serving more than 200 financial institution clients. The enhanced relationship will continue to combine FIS' strong position in financial services technology with mFoundry's award-winning mobile banking products.
"For the past few years, we have
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Canada's Payfirma Updates Its Mobile Payment App in a Big Way
January 30, 2012, 2:31 pm
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan 30, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Payfirma, the leader of mobile payments for businesses in Canada, announces the availability of the next version of its mobile payment app. The updated app brings a host of new features that make accepting credit cards on iPhones and iPads faster and easier than ever before. The app also boasts a sleeker design that doubles the speed to make transactions.
Created in collaboration with merchants, the focus of this release is on user efficiency, location awareness, and real-time information. Businesses can now access real-time transaction reporting with daily, weekly, and month-to-date
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How LevelUp aims to shake up mobile payments
January 30, 2012, 2:28 pm
When people think mobile payments, they think about the act of paying for goods by waving a smartphone at the cash register. But I'm more interested in the implications that come from the capability. You're seeing it now with the introduction of Google Wallet, which wants to use payment history to better serve discounts and advertisements. It's what comes next that is so exciting.
But as we're seeing with Google Wallet, as well as other attempts to bring mobile payments to the market, adoption is pretty tough. Using Google's service, for instance, requires you to be a Sprint customer using
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Tabbedout Names Paul Fiore as New CEO Veteran technology and financial services executive brought on to manage rapid growth
January 30, 2012, 2:24 pm
AUSTIN, TX. – January 30, 2012 –Tabbedout, the mobile payment solution that enables customers to open, view and pay their bar or restaurant tab with their phone, today announced that Paul Fiore has been named Chief Executive Officer. Fiore brings more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in the technology and financial services industries to Tabbedout. His previous roles include general manager of bank products for prepaid financial services company Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT), vice president of strategy for XP Systems, and CFO for AT&T Employees Federal Credit Union. He was also co-founder and CEO of banking software provider
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Big advancements underway in mobile NFC
January 13, 2012, 2:11 pm
Near Field Communication (NFC) wasn't a big topic at the Consumer Electronics Show, but it's still going to be a big force.
The new mobile standard, which allows for sending secure data in a contactless and powerful way, is just beginning to make strides in the smartphone market.
And that momentum isn't going anywhere. The big push is for NFC to become a new payment standard at stores around the world. So whether you're walking into McDonald's or Macy's, you can pay for everything by sliding your phone instead of using a credit card.
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PayPal raises mobile payments prediction to $7 billion in 2012
January 13, 2012, 10:27 am
One of the quickly growing trends in tech that didn’t have a very prominent showing at CES 2012 this week is mobile payments.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of major players in this field on hand throughout the show floor, including Visa and Intuit.
PayPal also made a mark on the show with a very strong prediction for mobile payments usage in 2012. During a panel discussion on Tuesday, eBay CEO John Donahoe announced that PayPal is projecting $7 billion in mobile payments volume for the digital wallet company in 2012.
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Finextra and Mobey Forum to stage European mobile banking and payments conference
January 13, 2012, 10:19 am
An influential panel of senior executives, practitioners and key stakeholders from across the mobile banking industry will gather inBarcelona on 21 March to debate the key issues facing banks, telecoms carriers and handset manufacturers as they bid to provide smartphone-toting consumers with a new generation of mobile banking and payments apps.
Hosted by Spanish bank La Caixa, the event will also include a delegate networking area showcasing the latest mobile banking services and products from leading banks, network operators, technology vendors and consultancies.
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IT-business divide harming mobile banking security
January 13, 2012, 10:14 am
Application delivery firm Akamai has called on financial institutions to review their business and IT alignment to ensure they don't fall victim to cyber attack, arguing that new digital channels are increasingly being launched by banks without a sufficient IT strategy behind them.
The calls came in a new Akamai report published by IDC on Thursday,New Threats Demand Innovative Responses.
t outlines how the sector is constantly trying to evolve its products and services to meeting the growing demands from customers for online and mobile banking, but warns that cyber criminals are targeting this space with increasing sophistication.
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Pushing Mobile Payments
January 13, 2012, 9:45 am
Sprint Nextel Corp. this week tripled the number of smartphones it offers with a seldom-used technology for tap-and-go payments, as the carrier
and its rivals try to convince a reluctant public to make mobile payments mainstream.
Sprint, which announced at the Consumer Electronics Show that it will add LG Electronics Co.'s Viper and Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy Nexus to its lineup, is among those betting big on the idea that people will want to use their smartphones as credit cards. So far customers and retailers have remained tepid toward the technology, called near-field communication, or NFC, prompting
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San Francisco Launches NFC Payment for All Its Metered Parking
January 12, 2012, 9:49 am
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is currently in the process of deploying Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled technology at all 30,000 of its metered street-side parking spaces that allow motorists to pay for parking via mobile phones. Installation began within the city's Castro District on Dec. 14, 2011, and the solution is already operational for 250 meters equipped with the NFC-enabled stickers, according to Paul Rose, SFMTA's media relations manager. With technology provided by PayByPhone, a driver can download and install an application to his NFC-enabled mobile phone, enabling him to pay for parking by tapping the phone against an NFC decal
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Moneto uses microSD to implement their own NFC payment system on Android
January 12, 2012, 9:28 am
When Google first announced their NFC based mobile payment system Google Wallet, there was some huge buzz surrounding the service. Since then, Google Wallet has fallen flat. Other than Sprint, no carriers want to support Google Wallet. Which means it hasn’t been on more than one device so far. Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T have their own NFC payment system on the way, but have yet to deliver any details on when it will arrive. It’s starting to look like NFC payments will never take off unless some sort of credible third party can think of a way to support just about
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Making the Most of Mobile Banking
January 12, 2012, 9:16 am
Innovations in the banking industry move at a tortoise pace. Think of what were arguably the breakthroughs in banking technology – the automated teller machine and debit cards – and you're talking about "new" products introduced, respectively, in 1967 and 1984.
However, there's a revolution brewing in the way customers bank. Called, in the industry's lexicon, "remote deposit capture," the technology allows customers to snap photographs of paper checks with their mobile devices and deposit them digitally. The technology promises to replace transactions that account for roughly 60% of bank branch visits.
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Mobile Payments in the Philippines: Future Opportunities for Growth
January 12, 2012, 8:45 am
We often hear that M-PESA was able to scale quickly because it targeted an unmet need: urban to rural remittances. Safaricom based the initial launch of the M-PESA service on the “send money home” proposition because a large proportion of split families in Kenya needed a way to send money to relatives in rural areas but had few ideal options to do so.
In many markets, however, such a clear unmet need does not exist. The Philippines is a prime example. Even though mobile money providers have been in the market for more than 10 years, they have struggled
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Tapping the Unbanked Market
January 12, 2012, 8:37 am
Post economic downturn, there is a healthy demand for prepaid cash services in the United States. In 2012, $118.5 billion will be loaded onto prepaid cards, accounting for 650 per cent growth since 2009. Establishing a light mobile wallet will grow this existing market and add valuable services to the U.S. economy, helping members of the lower-income, cash-dependent community build and protect their wealth while avoiding fees associated with traditional banking services.
According to a Federal Reserve Bank publication from 2010, “Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of payroll
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Mobile Financial Services and the Emerging Global Middle Class
January 11, 2012, 4:44 pm
Access to financial services is a major challenge for more than half the world’s population. In less-developed countries, 70 percent of the population has little or no access to financial services products of any kind. Ultimately, this gap makes it extremely difficult for more than 2.6 billion people worldwide to conduct even the most basic financial transactions: payments, savings or borrowing.
Many economists, public policy analysts and philanthropic institutions have come to the common conclusion that lack of financial access for this large segment of the planet’s population is a major barrier to further economic development in emerging markets.
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PayPal Mobile Payments Skyrocketed to $4 Billion in 2011
January 11, 2012, 4:15 pm
Online payment company PayPal processed nearly $4 billion worth of mobile payments in 2011, an exponential increase from the previous year.
To put this figure in perspective, the company processed $750 million worth of mobile transactions in 2010 and $141 million in 2009, David Marcus, vice president of PayPal Mobile, said at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The huge growth in mobile payment volume is the result of an overall increase in mobile commerce, combined with the availability of more useful mobile payment apps, Marcus told VentureBeat.
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Visa certifies RIM, Samsung, LG for mobile payments
January 11, 2012, 4:10 pm
Next generation smartphones from RIM, Samsung and LG have earned Visa’s approval for use in the burgeoning mobile payments field.
The certification puts Canadian consumers “one step closer” to flashing their smartphones instead of their credit cards when paying at the till, said Visa Canada’s Derek Colfer.
Contactless payment uses Near Field Communication (NFC), which works kind of like an antenna to communicate signals from a credit card or a smartphone to a payment terminal.
Until recently, NFC smartphones haven’t been in the market for consumers to use, Colfer said.
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Mobile Banking: Functionality, Security Top Demands
January 11, 2012, 3:50 pm
Mobile banking is on the rise, with 23 out of the United States' top 25 banks already offering some sort of mobile service. As smart phone and tablet usage grow, banks and credit unions will need to continue implementing and enhancing mobile technology, but they must focus on security and convenience, says Mary Monahan of Javelin Strategy & Research.
Today, 50 percent of smart-phone users use mobile banking, says Monahan, managing partner and research director at Javelin. Monahan recently oversaw the development of Javelin's 2011 Mobile Banking Financial Institution Scorecard, which notes that 8 percent of U.S. consumers already own tablets.
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Emerging Markets Mobile Banking Runs Ahead Of Google Wallet
January 11, 2012, 3:45 pm
Mobile phones have changed banking faster in emerging markets than in developed countries, so they may provide an indication of where hot tech like the Google Wallet might go if it ever catches up with South Africa, Kenya or Bangladesh. Banks in emerging markets are using mobile phones to extend their services to existing customers and to provide banking connectivity to individuals with no previous banking relationship.
Dutch-Banglad Bank, one of Bangaldesh’s largest, has selected Sybase 365 for its mobile banking platform.
Diarmuid Mallon of Sybase 365 said Dutch-Banglad Bank is a good example of the way banks are
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