Tag: mobile payments news

Mobile payments for homeless magazine powered by iZettle

| October 29, 2013

Vendors of the publication can now accept transactions over a smartphone or tablet.

iZettle, a Swedish company that provides social and mobile payments services, has now entered into a partnership with the magazine called Situation Sthlm, which is a publication that is sold in Stockholm by homeless people as a part of a program that provides them with the opportunity to earn money.

The transaction business is now working with the magazine company to help to make those sales easier.

iZettle announced that it will be working with the magazine by providing the sellers of the publication with smartphones and card readers. This will allow those sellers to be able to use mobile payments technology to accept payments on the spot, from the buyer’s credit or debit cards. No matter where the seller may be, as long as he or she has a cell phone signal, it will be possible to accept these digital transactions, instead of having to rely wholly on cash.

This agreement is the result of a successful mobile payments trial program that has now been completed.

Mobile Payments - iZettleThe trial using the mobile payments services ran for a full month through five sellers who were provided with smartphones and a card reader from iZettle. This gave them the ability to expand the acceptable transactions from cash to credit and debit, as well. To use the service, vendors simply plug the card reader into the smartphone. The customers could then swipe their cards and either sign on the device screen or use a PIN to be able to complete the purchase.

The smartphones that are used for the mobile payments program are collected – along with the card readers – from the central offices every day at the same time that the sellers obtain the magazines that they sell.

iZettle provides both the hardware and the mobile payments software in this agreement so that the sellers would be able to convert their tablets or smartphones into a type of credit and debit card terminal that works on the go. They also provide their services to other merchants and are compliant with EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and VISA) standards in addition to the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards).

Mobile payments law approved by president of Brazil

| October 16, 2013

This brings regulations for smartphone based transactions into the country, making the tech usable.

Dilma Rousseff, the President of Brazil, has now given approval to a brand new law that brings regulations to the mobile payments sector into the country in order to guide the businesses and consumers who wish to take part in this type of transaction.

This new law has formed an identity within the country that will make the transactions possible.

The law, which is number 12,865, has created a new form of legal identity, now known as a “payments institution”. This entity will receive its regulation from the Brazilian Central Bank. It will meant that consumers in Brazil will be able to take advantage of mobile payments and banking services from banks, financial institutions, and merchants.

These mobile payments will be targeted particularly toward consumers in the lower income brackets.

mobile payments BrazilThe original intentions of the government were outlined in plans for the regulation over mobile payments as a whole in Brazil, back in May of this year. That original introduction came in the form of a bill that required common standards for this type of transaction that would be maintained throughout the country. It also stated that these services must be interoperable among the various smartphone based transaction programs in the country.

More recently, in September, the Chamber of Deputies and the Brazilian Senate both gave their approval to the mobile payments bill. From that stage, it was moved onward to the desk of the president in order to make it possible for it to be passed into a law.

Now that the president has, indeed, approved the law, it is up to the Brazilian Central Bank to be able to come up with the rules for mobile payments operators to follow in order to offer this type of transaction. The Brazilian Central Bank has 180 days as of the signing of the law by the president in order to create those regulations to be followed by that sector of the industry. The near future will be very defining to the ability of Brazilians to be able to pay using their smartphones.