Mobile finances

T-Mobile USA Inc announced a new purchasing program Direct Carrier Billing to allow customers to make purchase of digital content and services from their Internet connected devices. Using Direct Carrier Billing customers of T-Mobile can charge purchases of digital games, gaming and social networking credits, music, videos and other digital content offerings directly to their existing T-Mobile account right from the Web browser using their PC, smartphone, netbook or computer tablet.

Verizon Wireless in association with American Express are integrating Serve online payment system for the use in mobile phones and tablets.

Customers may fund their Serve accounts via an existing credit or debit card or checking account, and then make purchases from a mobile device. The payment is authenticated with the user's mobile number.

Besides, customers will be given a Serve card when signing up for the service. This card then can be used for in-person purchases in stores.

Smartag, a division of Identive Group, announced that it gained an order from "a leading mobile handset manufacturer" to design and supply more than one million NFC tags within a period of 6 months. The tags will be included in-box with each purchase of an NFC-enabled smart phone. The company didn’t name the smartphone maker.

Hypercom Corporation announced that Avant-Garde Marketing Solutions has selected its Optimum M4230 multi-application mobile payment terminal and Mobile Network service. Avant-Garde also will be marketing these solutions to its thousands of merchant customers nationwide.

Avant-Garde will be marketing the M4230 mobile terminal along with Hypercom’s Mobile Network as an affordable bundled solution that increases businesses’ revenue by enabling them to extend their payment acceptance reach beyond fixed locations.

A provider of image based authentication and verification solutions Confident Technologies Inc announced a new product Confident Multifactor Authentication. The solution represents a two-factor authentication that delivers an image-based authentication challenge to users' mobile phones for a more secure out-of-band authentication process.

A mobile payments trial has been started in Czech Republic by Telefónica O2 Czech Republic, Komerční Banka, Citibank Europe, supermarket chain Globus and Visa Europe.

The test program will be trialed with the participation of 200 clients of both Citibank and Telefonica as well as two hundred common clients of Komerční Banka and Telefonica. The payments will be made with Samsung Star 5230 NFC phones at three Globus hypermarkets in Prague as well as a Globus store in the city of Pilsen.

Gartner predicts that over 140 million people will be into mobile payments services this year while mass market adoption of NFC payments is still at least four years away.

The forecast says that more than 141.1 million people will use mobile payments services in 2011, up 38.2% from 102.1 million people a year ago. Over the past year the volume of mobile payments has grown by 75.9% from US$48.9bn in 2010 to $86.1bn in 2011.

Yet, Gartner notes that the mobile payment market is growing more slowly than expected.

A digital eGift company Giftango announced the launch of Mobile Wallet Conversion Platform. The service allows users to securely convert plastic gift cards into digital payments by just entering and leveraging a 2D barcode on the back of a plastic gift card.

Giftango has assembled the infrastructure needed to help bring merchants, incentive houses, plastic card printers, and virtual payment technology companies together to drive consumer adoption of the mobile wallet.

A provider of mobile commerce solutions CorFire announced the launch of branded suite of technology products including CorTrust™, its Trusted Service Manager (TSM); CorPay™, a mobile wallet platform; and Cor360™, a set of mobile marketing services that includes location-enabled offers, gifting, and loyalty services.

Isis, a joint venture company conjointly owned by AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, announced the new partnership with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express — all four of the major US payments networks.

"Isis' relationships with all four payment networks means that with Isis-enabled phones and payment terminals in place, merchants and consumers will have ubiquity and freedom of choice when it comes to payment network acceptance," says the company.

American Express has entered into a partnership with Sprint to offer mobile customers an access to ServeSM, a recently launched digital payment platform from American Express. It is the first relationship with a mobile carrier since the service launch in March.

Now Sprint customers will be able to use Serve mobile wallet application on their select Android-based smartphones. Sprint customers with these devices can find Sprint Zone, which also provides Sprint account information, recommends apps and more, as an icon on their Sprint mobile device.

Admeris Payments, an mCommerce provider for retail, advertising, app developers, digital media, publishing and telecom billion unveiled new payment industry solution OneTouch.

OneTouch is meant to help solve three main mCommerce problems: authentication of customers and their smartphones; ease-of-use to perform single and repeat transactions and powerful cryptographic security design to reduce fraud against merchants and consumers.

Citi Ventures, a unit of Citigroup, has invested in Billing Revolution, a mobile payments provider. Last year Citi Ventures sponsored Billing Revolution’s Single-Click Checkout, a cross-platform, low-friction mobile billing service.

A provider of Internet and mobile payment solutions Adyen announced the launch of a single-click mobile payment solution for iPhone and Android. Using the new platform app developers at the iTunes have an alternative payment gateway that accepts credit cards, PayPal and a range of other payment methods within mobile applications and mobile websites.

Tailored for mobile environment Adyen payment platform eliminates the need for merchants and developers to care for security and PCI compliance.

A mobile banking solutions provider Monster Offers has partnered with Iconosys Inc to integrate the Monster Offers one-click mobile payment solutions with more than 500 popular mobile phone applications like DealBuzzer™, DriveReply™, Trick or Tracker™, and Tell My Geo™.

As a part of their deal Monster Offers will be able to offer its mobile payment solutions through the current and future Iconosys distribution network of mobile phone application users.