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Simpay, the ambitious
cross-border mobile payments service, was shut
down in June of this year. It had been set up by
Orange , Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefónica
Móviles to facilitate low value payments being
made through the mobile phone and charged to consumers'
mobile telephone bills.
Observers of the industry have claimed that the
demise of Simpay was a lost opportunity and that
consumers and merchants will be losers because of
the high cost and inconvenience of alternative payment
methods.
We think that the imminent
launch of mobileATM™ in
the UK and in other international territories will
more than make up for this. mobileATM™ brings the
functionality and interface of the familiar high
street ATM to your mobile phone. It is unique in:
- Offering the lowest
cost access to source of funds for m-commerce
funds on a mobile phone ;
- Providing direct
and instant access to an individual's bank account;
- Providing banking
grade encryption and security extremely tight
over the mobile channel security, better than
physical ATM's;
- Reducing the potential
for fraud and transaction repudiation;
- Providing
a 2-Factor Authentication Service over the Internet
to secure e-commerce payments.
It has the potential to underpin the mobile and
digital economies in a way that makes transactions
and services both easier and more secure.
It is collaborative
not competitive with wallet-based mobile payment
initiatives which by providing a simple consumer ‘source of funds' . rely on the ability
to put cash onto the phone . mobileATM™ is the low
cost, secure, real-time mechanism to transfer cleared
and non repudiable cash funds into the wallet.
mobileATM™ is working with a number of banks to
develop 2-Factor Authentication solutions to provide
financial institutions with protection against phishing
and ‘man in the middle' attacks, which have become
increasingly costly of late and risk undermining
market confidence in Internet and telephone banking.
Three 2-Factor Authentication
transaction types will be offered by mobileATM™:
-
- One Time Password
- Transaction Data Signing
- Challenge/Response
Because mobileATM™ leverages existing infrastructure
to transfer data securely between the systems of
the financial institutions and the mobile telephone
of the customer, it is a cost effective alternative
to the provision of smart card readers or RSA security
tags, which are the only other ways to bring a similar
level of security to the internet and telephone banking
environments. The mobileATM™ solution also has the
advantage that the one-off security passcode is delivered
using a device that retail customers commonly keep
to hand, rather than asking them to carry a separate
tool solely to allow access to banking services.
Connected to all leading mobile networks, the service
also has the backing of and a direct access into
37 Financial institutions including all of the High
Street banks, through the joint venture partner,
LINK. LINK's experience of creating the shared ATM
network in the UK brings unrivalled experience and
credibility to the project.
Banks and operators
are currently in testing phase and the service
is due to launch early in 2006 with a core product
set of pre-pay top up, balance inquiry, mini statements
and a 2-Factor Authentication Service for securing
the Internet banking channel. commerce. |
Ariadne
Capital Journal - Through the Maze Volume
5, Edition 3
