Tag: smartphone payments

It now supports real-time smartphone based transactions in a growing number of countries.

M-Pesa, the mobile payments platform that was created by Safaricom, has already been providing digital money systems in a number of different countries, particularly in Africa.

It set the standard for the industry in Kenya, since it was first created in 2007 and has a growing user base.

The strength of M-Pesa has come from providing mobile payments options to populations that have been primarily unbanked or under banked. Today, the company is providing these options to over 16 million people in Kenya so that they will have access to financial services on a basic level for the first time. It has also allowed the service to broaden quite rapidly into other marketplaces, such as India and Afghanistan.

A recent mobile payments news report has now announced a new upgraded platform for the service.

The report was published in Business Daily in Kenya and stated that M-Pesa was upgrading the services that it is offering to a new mobile payments platform that will help to keep it a step ahead of many of the other providers who are setting sights on the same markets, as well as some of the leaders in both developed economies and emerging markets.

The new and upgraded platform will provide expanded mobile payments processing capacity for the service and will allow users to be able to complete post paid utility bill transactions, as well as pay their insurance premiums, and complete other forms of transaction in real time.

The migration of the mobile payments service to the new platform is being handled by Huawei, the telecommunications provider from China. It has been estimated that the first phase will be completed before the end of 2013, and that the entire process will take a total of approximately 18 months.

Michael Joseph, a former CEO of Safaricom, explained that as well as mobile payments of bills, the new upgraded platform will also make it possible for the integration of M-Pesa with other types of vendors, including retail outlets. This will make it possible for in-store real time payments to take place at some point in the not too distant future.

Morpho NFC-enabled SIM cards could make mobile payments more available

Morpho, a developer of SIM cards for mobile devices, has announced that it will be supplying a new brand of NFC-enabled SIM cards to the MobiPag project, which is based in Portugal. The MobiPag project comes from a consortium of Portuguese companies that have a strong interest in mobile payments. These companies are eager to see mobile payments become more common throughout the country and believe that NFC SIM cards may be the best way to see this hope become a reality.

NFC technology continues attracting criticism

NFC technology is one of the most important tools in the world of mobile commerce. Most of the world’s mobile payments platforms have been based on this technology in the past. The technology itself is relatively simple, as it allows for digital information to be collected and transmitted over short distances. NFC technology has been the target of harsh criticism for its uses in mobile payments recently, largely due to the low availability of NFC-enabled mobile devices.

NFC SIM cards could help draw more people to mobile payments

Because most mobile payments services are based on NFC technology, only mobile devices that are equipped with the technology can make use of these services. NFC-enabled mobile devices are still quite rare throughout the world, effectively limiting the number of people that can participate in mobile commerce in any significant way. An NFC-enabled SIM card could solve this problem, however, as such a card would give a mobile device NFC capabilities without actually being equipped with the technology.

Simple solution may yield powerful results

Morpho believes that its NFC-enabled SIM cards will help draw more consumers into mobile payments through the MobiPag project. These consumers will be able to make payments with nothing more than their mobile device thanks to these SIM cards. Overall, this solution may lead to a major surge in Portuguese mobile payments that could establish the country as one of the most active mobile commerce hubs in the world.