Mobile commerce getting major boost from country’s national wireless operators

Canada’s three national wireless carriers have once again joined forces to bring innovative, interoperable mobile services to wireless subscribers. Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless Inc. and Telus Mobility announced November 7 the creation of Wireless Payment Services (WPS), a three-way joint venture aimed at developing payment services over the cell phone. WPS is to act as a gateway, creating a standard and common way to clear payments made from cell phones. The company’s first application, which will take about a year to develop, will allow prepaid wireless subscribers to buy additional minutes using their debit or credit cards. Jeff Chorlton, president of WPS, says the application will be easy for the consumer to use. "Once they’ve selected the payment method they would like to use – they would only have to do that once and they can have it as their default – if they’ve chosen debit card as an example, then their debit card would be debited and their prepaid top up...completed," he explains. Initial service launch is expected in the third quarter of 2006. Chorlton says this includes carrier testing and trials. The trend toward the cell phone becoming the wallet has already taken hold in a number of other countries such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, the United Kingdom and others. Canadians are also interested in this type of cell phone functionality, according to a survey conducted for Report on Wireless by Decima Research. The results revealed that 22% of Canadian cell phone users would pay for gas for the car with their handset. Further, 21% would purchase movie theatre tickets, 18% would pay for public transportation, 16% would pay for parking and 15% would purchase coffee and snacks. (A more in-depth article on this research is available in the Aug. 25/05 issue of Report on Wireless.) Chorlton says the country’s three national operators realized they had a common goal with respect to mobile payments and needed to get together to make it a reality. "They had a common interest, a common need, a common requirement and they realized that the consumer at the end of the day would be a whole lot better off if they got together to develop a common infrastructure," he tells Report on Wireless. The mobile wallet is the end-game of this development, says Chorlton. He notes that topping up minutes for pre-paid wireless subscribers is "just one of many applications that we look to down the road...What we’re looking at is linking a variety of different payment methods together through the mobile wallet, so we could include debit, it could include credit and it might also include stored value ." Chorlton says it’s too early to elaborate on any potential future payment applications, noting that the company has just launched. "What I can tell you is we’re formulating a plan to rollout a variety of other applications after the pre-paid top up," he states. "I guess what we to do is listen to the research...and look to other jurisdictions to see where they’ve had success and look to build upon those successes." Other payment applications developers happy about standardsIndependent payment application and service developers are also bullish on the idea of the three national wireless operators getting together to develop a common method of wireless payments for merchants. Mint Inc. is one such company that is already in wireless payment trials with Rogers Communications Inc. using RFID technology in contactless payments (RoW, June 29/05). Frank Maduri, president of Mint, says, "It’s a good thing because to have everybody independently create a different way to do this and then try to get merchants to buy into three different ways is going to be hard because merchants want a common method." He likens the carriers’ decision to create a common payment mechanism to credit and debit card payments. "As an example, merchants accept credit and debit cards. They can pick any number of vendors like Moneris or whoever and they install it in the store and they can accept any credit or debit card...So the carriers coming out with a new method is going to be a challenge. But if it’s standard, it’s going to be easier for merchants to accept it. It’s a very good thing," Maduri tells Report on Wireless. The outlook for success for this initiative is pretty good, based on the success wireless operators have had with inter-carrier SMS and inter-carrier hotspot roaming. It’s still too early to tell how quickly this new payment method will catch on, but Chorlton anticipates substantial demand. "We expect that there is going to be a very large demand from both merchants and consumers. But in terms of what sequence they take to get on the service, I don’t know at this point," he says.

Mobile commerce getting major boost from country’s national wireless operators

News | 11/16/2005 5:00 am EST

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