The Fujitsu W-Wallet Solution

This one by Fujitsu is a solution that uses a downloadable J2ME application and can be used for:

• Point of Sale purchasing
• Ticket purchasing
• Easy and secure web purchasing
• Person-to-person payments
• ATM transactions
• Two-factor authentication
• Single Sign-On

It will be demonstrated at CTIA06, on April 6,7 2006.

Another MWallet, this one by MoreMagic

This MWallet is not by Motorola:

MWallet provides a stored value account that enables consumers to make secure payments. It offers consumers multi-channel top-up functionality. For the mobile operator, MWallet brings the benefit of offering a prepaid voucher solution without the production, distribution, and administration costs normally associated with physical prepaid vouchers.

I wonder what is the situation with the trademarks. A search ay USPTO for trademarks brings no results for mwallet (capitalization seems not to matter) but for M-Wallet reveals 2 abandoned applications (by Motorola !).

Yet another one in the US: Obopay

Is this another J2ME application solution? The news release makes it sound like it:

Obopay, Complete Mobile Payment Service, Closes $10 Million Series A Funding: "The Obopay service will be fast and easy to use and will work on any mobile phone. In addition to enabling mobile payments, Obopay will allow users to instantly get cash from any ATM or spend it at millions of merchants. With the complete Obopay service, mobile users can manage their account directly from their phones."

MobileLime solution using RFID

MobileVillage: PDAs, Handhelds, Mobile Computing & Wireless Technology for Business: "MobileLime's new quick-scan features only work with an RFID compatible phone -- currently only the Nokia 3220, though more such phones are expected in the future. The user just clicks the lime from the phone's menu screen, choose the credit card they want to use and wave their phone over the contactless reader that's integrated with the point of sale system at checkout. For added security, the user can configure a PIN required to complete each transaction."

Nokia, Motorola Show Cellular-VoIP Phones

Chicago Tribune | Nokia, Motorola Show Cellular-VoIP Phones:

The new Nokia 6136 and Motorola A910 handsets introduced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona can connect to the Internet via WiFi, rather than Bluetooth, to make cut-price calls from the home, office or public hotspot. A handful of similar phones have been announced by smaller manufacturers in recent months.

Do such phones and the push for WiFi-based VoIP present a great opportunity for m-payments? The WiFi link can be used as extremely fast local communication in a physical POS and for virtual POS transactions the WiFi will make the user experience extremely fast with negligible network latency.

Are m-payments a threat to PayPal and Google Wallet?

PayPal is the dominant Third Party Payer for e-commerce (web purchasing using a web browser) especially since their acquisition of Verisign's gateway business. Google is also getting into this space (see "PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google" from the Wall Street Journal).

Since PayPal's inception, the user experience has been fundamentally the same: a consumer uses her desktop/laptop computer to enter her PayPal username/password and make a payment, without the need to share the payment instrument information with the merchant. Of course PayPal has made enormous strides to strengthen its offering: (1) "integration" with merchants has made the flow of the user experience easier (but fundamentally the same as before), and (2) fraud detection and prevention provides peace of mind to its users (although such protection is a requirement for adoption since credit card companies offer it too).

The question is whether m-payments, i.e., payments using a mobile phone, will be a threat to e-commerce modes of payment like PayPal or the upcoming Google Wallet. The mobile introduces a new payment modality that can easily extend (at least in the case of what Motorola announced, or in the case of PayWi) to online payments. Once you use the mobile for payments, the distinction between physical POS payments and virtual POS payments (PayPal's core business) is rather minor to the user. At the same time, for the consumer, the mobile can bring convenience, ease of use and a sense of ownership of the process (since consumers use their phone, which is always with them). Would that be a disruptive competition for online payment providers?

NFC-enabled mobile phones trial

Accordint to NFC-enabled mobile phones trial, the details are:

• Phones by Nokia
• Network carrier is Cingular
• NFC chip by Philips
• •Credit Card by Chase with Visa USA supporting
  
• •Terminals by Vivotech
• The merchant is Atlanta Hawks & Thrashers
• The consumer is the season ticket holders who can use it to pay at concession stands of Philips Arena

It is a complicated dance to get all the parties together for this type of m-payments.

M-payments with a J2ME application

The push for m-payments with a downloadable application has a lot to do with the push for mobile broadband services by the carriers and the deployment of mobile broadband networks in order to support such services. Carriers are enticing users to use such services which means that users become more familiar with downloading things into the mobile and at the same time (thanks to faster mobile networks) the user experience is faster and more pleasant.

As a result, according to M:Metrics (http://www.mmetrics.com/) a company that generates mobile market data,. 30.7 % (2.4 M users) of owners of the top ten multimedia mobile phones have accessed mobile applications or downloaded mobile content (that percentage is almost 50% for RAZR owners).

Mobile Person-to-Person payments

TextPayMe to challenge PayPal with a SMS based solution.

Motorola's M-Wallet: mobile payments with a J2ME application

Motorola seems to get into this, with a software solution and a downloadable application:

The M-Wallet service will come in the form of a downloadable application, compatible with not only Motorola handsets, but also handsets from other manufacturers, and even PDA's. Initially, the M-Wallet system will only allow banking transactions such as on line bill payments, funds transfers, and purchases through participating retailers such as airlines.

Also, see the Chicago tribune article on M-Wallet

Mobile payments with a downloadable application from PayWi

PayWi http://www.paywi.com. is demoing a solution with a downloadable app, no user info stored on phone, 5-digit PIN. See their demo from DEMO06 and check the press release.

DoCoMo Launching Mobile Credit Card

I guess DoCoMo is adding Credit Card to their prepaid card. I see no mention of a security feature but their has to be one.

Wireless Watch Japan: "DoCoMo Launching Mobile Credit Card
Wireless News :: New Tech & Services
WWJ Editors, 8 November 2005
DoCoMo's Osaifu keitai (mobile wallet) line of cellphones will soon have their own branded virtual credit card for mobile payments. The iD card ('i' as in iMode) will be launched on December 1, 2005 and will enhance existing credit card services by giving credit card owners the option of making payments via a DoCoMo wallet phone linked to the card, in addition to conventional payments with their plastic credit card. That means charges through the phone will automatically be deducted from the user's designated credit card. Just waving the phones in front of dedicated reader/writers at stores will start the payment process.

A good article explaining more can be found here.

WiFi mobile

This one seems to have it all ...

The Sony Ericsson P990 UMTS and WiFi smartphone is official: "

At last. After all the leaked photos, Sony Ericsson really had no choice but to officially announce the Hermione P950 P1000 P990 “well ahead of availability.” This 3G (UMTS) smartphone has the same dimensions as the P910 but adopts the Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3 software platform while throwing down with WiFi (802.11b), Bluetooth, a 2 megapixel camera with “photo light,” video calling, FM radio, MP3 and MPEG-4 player, and keyboard (QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, or Russian) underneath the flip-down keypad. Web browsing is accomplished in landscape mode on the 2.8-inch QVGA screen using the new Opera 8 browser and is “prepared for all major push e-mail clients.” The unit ships with 80MB free memory and a 64MB Memory Stick Pro DUO card in the box. The P990 will drop in Europe and Asia in Q1 2006. More pix after the jump.

Fandango mobile payments follow-up

My speculation was wrong. This is not a downloadable application. Their solution is the Fandango website remade for a mobile phone browser. Purchasing requires typing a login name and password, as you would do on the "regular" website. You can check it out at http://mobile.fandango.com/ .

Finger payments

I do not know how comfortable Americans are with the idea of giving a company their fingerprints, but it is an interesting idea and perhaps the ultimate mobile payment solution.

MercuryNews.com | 10/04/2005 | Start-up getting financing for fingerprint technology: "A San Francisco start-up, Pay By Touch Solutions, is expected to announce today $130 million in fresh financing for a novel way of paying for groceries and other goods and services: a machine that reads your fingerprint."

Fandango features the cell phone as ticketing and marketing tool

InternetRetailer.com - Daily News for Monday, September 26, 2005:

"To receive the tickets purchased through a cell phone, users will hand their credit card to a ticket clerk or use the card to swipe a kiosk that will print out a ticket based on their order, a spokesman says. But Fandango eventually expects to enable purchasers to download a ticket barcode from Movie.Fandango.com, save it to their handheld device, then have it scanned by a ticket-taker at the theater, he said."

I am guessing that initially there is no security token entered by the user on the phone, because the credit card is used as a second authentication factor to get the ticket while in the movie theater. I guess there is only an identifier in the mobile app, identifying the user ... It mentions that in the future they will do a barcode; this will require some user security token to be entered into the mobile app by the user (a PIN?) at the time of purchase.

Reading barcodes of a mobile phone's display

Reading barcodes of a mobile phone's display (by NEC)

The article is in Japanese, but this seems to be a product from 2003.

Yahoo launches cell phone shopping in Japan

Computerworld Singapore - Yahoo launches cell phone shopping in Japan: "Yahoo Japan Corp. has opened a version of its shopping portal for cell phone Internet users, the company said Monday.

Mobile Yahoo Shopping can be accessed from all three of Japan's major wireless Internet services and brings together about 2,000 merchants and 2 million items for sale, according to estimates from Yahoo."

Nice Blog with i-mode and DoCoMo business news

This blog and newsletter is a good resource for all business things relating to DoCoMo and i-mode. A lot of what can be found there is payment-related.

i-mode Business Strategy

Contactless payments and the security challenges

This is a good summary of what is going on with NFC tokens and payments and a brief discussion of the security implications.

Contactless payments and the security challenges: "Please note that this is an example given for the purpose of discussion; it is not meant to represent any of the operational schemes discussed in this article. The security of this typical example scheme is not absolute. There is no cardholder verification (i.e. a signature or a PIN), but all transactions are authorised online, so a lost or stolen card can be blocked as soon as it is reported (although it has to be said that consumers will generally notice the loss or their keys or mobile phone pretty quickly). For this example scheme, it might be useful to add an online PIN only for transactions above �20 or so."

A rundown of the options for mobile payments

The number of articles on mobile phones and payments in US media has been increasing lately. Here is another one with some excerpts of note:

First, there are two ways of doing it

"Two primary options exist for the payment provider looking to place his tech inside a cell phone: integrate the process with the handset’s software, or simply treat the phone as a carrier for a chip."

Optinon 1:

"In the former, payment information would be stored in the phone’s memory, and consumers would activate a menu on the handset to enable payment. According to Gordon-Lathrop, this motif is attractive because it allows multiple cards to be stored."

Option 2:

"The other approach is to simply place a contactless chip inside the phone’s shell, enabling customers to wave or tap the phone over an enabled POS the same way they would a contactless card. This notion obviously jumps the hurdle of integration with the phone, at the cost of the "multiple cards in one virtual wallet" promise."

Remsik said one possible upshot of this might be the proliferation of interchangeable mobile phone "jackets," which would allow consumers to pop in the contactless chip of their choice, regardless of phone model."

Ther is another way, of course ...

"Tools that promise uniformity and compatibility — Java, for instance — definitely have the potential to tackle this problem, but many phones still will not run Java apps."

But, apparently phones get lost easily, which might (or might not) be a problem, depending on the solution.

"The contactless arena as a whole is grappling with the potential security risks of beaming payment information through the ether, even if it is only a few inches. Putting the transmitter inside a phone raises a few extra eyebrows: Remsik points to data which shows that people are three times more likely to lose a cell phone than a wallet."

I would love to see the actual survey with that data.

Reading barcodes off mobiles

picturephoning.com: SMS barcode revolution kicks off in Ireland: "Once the credit card transaction has been completed a bar code for the appropriate quantity is sent instantly to the customer’s mobile phone. When the customer is boarding an Aircoach vehicle they simply open up the message and swipe the bar code image over a barcode reader beside the driver and the transaction is complete.'"

Reading barcodes off mobiles

Mobile Phone Barcode Name Badge - World First!: "Developed by Sydney registration specialists Info Salons Australia in co-operation with AURA a Sydney telecommunications company, the system is set in motion when intending visitors pre-register online.

'When they submit their registration details, we send them a confirming email and then a barcode by SMS to their mobile phones. When they arrive at the show, they simply need to retrieve the barcode from their Message Inbox and have it scanned at the door,” said Jo-Anne Kelleway, Managing Director of Info Salons Australia."

WiFi phones are coming

A WiFi phone is a phone for making a voice call, over a wireless (typically over a WLAN connection). They can be "merged" with mobile phones into a single device (like this one by NEC for DoCoMom available in Japan), they can be "made" by just adding a WiFi capability to an existing device (such as a handheld), or they may look like your typical cordless phone at home.

From a Wireless Wallet point of view they are interesting because the WLAN can be used as a comm link for transactions. See this article too.

Daily Wireless has a good article on "WiFi Phones"; there are quite a few of them out there and more are coming out as VoIP is moving into the home/consumer market since a WiFi phone that uses wireless to connect to the broadband connection makes sense. See also this other Daily Wireless article on some of the latest VoWiFi (Voice WiFi phones) coming out now or in the near future.

Signs of life for wireless wallets in the US

The article seems to suggest that US companies are warming up to the idea, but perhaps they are not sure where to start from.

Wireless wallets come closer to reality:

"U.S. companies have been quiet about mobile commerce since hype about wireless wallets was deflated when the dot.com bubble burst in 2000. Many are still skeptical, but some are warming to the idea again amid U.S. and overseas developments."

"Some analysts question whether this technology, known as near field communications, will catch on as it requires an extra chip in phones and widespread acceptance by advertisers"

A great place for researching mobile payment solutions

The ePayments Systems Observatory is a great starting place for unearthing information about mobile payment solutions:

The ePSO inventory is a database on electronic payment systems, related projects and initiatives. Its geographical scope is Europe, but relevant activities outside Europe are also sometimes taken into account in a selective way (e.g. innovations). Although the focus is on payment inititiatives, also several interoperability, technical and strategic initiatives are included.

It includes a search facility, which is great if you want to search for specific terms. If instead, you want to see solutions by country, topic or system name, try this one. Finally, it includes some interesting papers.

Documentation

From the other Wireless Wallet Blog: "We now have extensive documentation for Wireless Wallet."

Another company that claims using a mobile's camera to "read" barcodes

SCANBUY | Optical Intelligence for your mobile phones: " Scanbuy's Optical Intelligence™ is a full software solution turning camera phone into personal barcode scanners. Optical Intelligence™ reads and translates barcodes on-device through the use of low-cost CMOS imager based digital cameras."

Free software for "reading" barcodes with a mobile phone

... and a lot of other interesting stuff involving mobiles and barcodes

Semacode | URL barcodes | practical ubiquitous computing: How it works

Semacode tags such as the one at left are based on the international ISO/IEC standard Data Matrix. A semacode tag uses this type of optical 2D barcode to store a URL in a secure format that can resist up to 50% damage to the tag.

Application developers and general users can create their own semacode tags using the Tagger tools. It's a simple matter of typing in a valid URL and then posting the barcode wherever you like. Anyone is free to create as many different semacode tags as they like.

When you have semacode tags to read, the solution is the semacode Reader tools. The reader tool is available in many forms to suit the needs of different audiences. For example, there is Reader software for common Java Phones, smartphones, and also for PCs and internet servers. The Reader takes advantage of the camera that is found in most contemporary mobile phones.

A good pointer about mixing phones and barcodes

Ericsson: Barcodes come to mobile phones:
"A number of companies are developing applications and middleware that can turn a standard camera phone into a portable barcode scanner. This combined with WAP and GPRS opens up a world of possibilities for new applications and services. Mobile barcode scanning is being used to improve logistics, allow instant time reporting for working in the field and provide ways to link the physical world to the web."

Turning your smartphone into a universal code reader for Data Matrix, QR and linear barcodes

Reading barcodes with a phone ...

Lavasphere for Smartphones - Turning your smartphone into a universal code reader for Data Matrix, QR and linear barcodes: "Simply by scanning a code on a poster, in a magazine or on the product itself, up-to-date availability information can be requested direct­ly. Using the integrated Lavasphere application, users can download a train schedule, make a reservation for a concert ticket or simply connect to the appropriate website. Scanning a phone number on a business card will store the information in the user's personal contacts. Codes are captured by the built-in camera and decoded by the Lavasphere software, with the result available to any application.

Easy-to-use software with immediate image preview and Zero-Click™ live-stream decoding allows for easy targeting and decoding. The image processing algorithms allow for omni-directional decoding of all 1d and 2d codes."

Motorola Announces Dual Mode GSM / Wi-Fi Phone (Phone Scoop)

Motorola Announces Dual Mode GSM / Wi-Fi Phone (Phone Scoop): "While the A910 maintains the same feature list and even the same size, it packs a big data surprise: 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi in addition to Bluetooth and tri-band GSM/GPRS (EDGE). The phone also includes UMA for seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Features include a 1.3 MP camera with Lumi-LED flash, TransFlash memory card slot, QVGA screen and speaker-independent voice recognition. Available Q1 2006."

Mobile payments in China

It seems that there is a mobile payments in China (SMS based): SmartPay Jieyin Ltd: About Us

Pay, with SmartPay

An example of a typical SmartPay transaction is the payment of a monthly mobile phone bill. The mobile operator sends the bill directly to a SmartPay user's phone through SMS. The user simply has to reply, and SmartPay deducts payment from the user's bank account and credits the merchant. It is simple, fast, and safe. Users can also access the system through web, WAP, IVR, and other convenient interfaces.

How SmartPay Works

SmartPay works by linking a user's bank account to their mobile phone number. The user can register for the service through a phone bank interface, the internet or at the bank counter. The mobile phone then acts as a 'digital identity' certifying the user and allowing SmartPay to process payments on their behalf for products and services purchased from participating SmartPay merchants.

"NTT DoCoMo: VISION 2010" circa 2003 (but not by DoCoMo)

In DoCoMo's video from "NTT DoCoMo: VISION 2010" you can see a person using a credit card sized device that communicates wirelessly (from within a few feet) with a POS. The person (an elderly lady impersonating a consumer, pays for her purchase with this device, selecting the form of payment from the device, presumably while using some security feature (a PIN? a fingerprint?), without the need to type or enter anything into the POS, or give the cashier a card.



Interesting but if you want it "now" check the following picture (circa 2003). It has WLAN, battery, display, buttons and it is credit card sized, albeit a bit thicker (~14mm) since it was built with off-the-self components. It will scan for available Points of Sale (a POS is accessible through a Access Point or it has a AP attached to it) , connect to the one that the consumer chooses and the consumer can make a payment (the whole wireless environment is "open" at the transport layer). A payment takes less than 15 seconds (the consumer types a PIN; security does not rely on the PIN only, of course).



The whole concept will work with a WLAN-capable mobile too.

Good summary of various wireless wallet efforts

This article is a good summary of various wireless wallet efforts worldwide and in the US.

Google gearing for mobile payments?

A couple of interesting Google hiring ads

• Mobile Wireless Application Developer
• Risk Analyst

maybe Google is doing a downloadable app for mobile phones, for mobile payments.

PayPal in China

See Muscle-flexing by China Mobile; PayPal due to arrive

Since they already have a competitor in China, maybe they would be interested in getting a leg up on the competition, such as: AliPay, which is a company owned by Alibaba (funny name ... I know), which has some interesting investors (e.g., Softbank, see Softbank board members )

KDDI Announces EZ-Felica Wallet Cell Phone Service

From Wireless Watch again ...

WWJ Viewpoint :: New Tech & Services
WWJ Editors, 11 July 2005
Fresh off the newswire [press release in Japanese], KDDI has just announced that they are set to roll out wallet enabled handsets for their new "EZ-Felica" campaign scheduled to hit the Ginza sometime this September. According to the company, they are street testing the new BREW based application program which will offer digital cash, and various membership services such as loyalty points for registered users. But Wait.. thats not all, at the same time they also announced today (me-thinks those PR folks missed out on the Tanabata Festival this weekend) that from January 2006 KDDI will enable customers to use "Mobility Suica" in partnership with East Japan Railway Company (JR) as well. Wow.. it seems like only yesterday, actually it was December 2003, we reported "KDDI Joins FeliCa Bandwagon".

Note that "new BREW based application program which will offer digital cash, and various membership services such as loyalty points for registered users", i.e., a downloadable application.

Here is the press release press release and a rought translation in English rough translation into English

Yahoo launches cell phone shopping in Japan

Yahoo cell phone shopping in Japan

The last paragraph reads:
"Satisfaction levels with online shopping are much lower among cell phone users, with ease of use and security among the biggest complaints"

Also, with Google entering the payment market, Yahoo might want to re-visit the issue.

Japan Ready to Launch Cellphone P2P Digital Cash

from Wireless Watch

WWJ Editors, 7 July 2005
bitWallet Ltd., the company that manages digital cash service Edy (Euro-Dollar-Yen), just announced [Press Release in Japanese] that they will launch their new service called "Edy to Edy" on Wednesday, July 20. According to their statement "the value of Edy can be sent only by the Edy number, the mail address or the telephone number, it is thought that the payment for net auction, personal gifts or adjustment and congratulation can be used more conveniently". A minimum transfer fee of 50yen will be charged for each transaction plus (Aha!) the govt's standard 5% consumption tax, the maximum amount per transfer is limited to 50,000yen. P2P transactions between individual handsets has, until now, not been possible in Japan

The related press release is here http://www.edy.jp/press/html/050706.html and a very rough translation of it into English is available in PDF (for the non-Japanese speakers) by sending e-mail to Y.

BitWallet is the company and Edy is the product solution.

Future Calling

Another pointer sent by our friend J.E.

FUTURE CALLING: "Cell phones promise to make life easier by giving consumers a wide-range of possibilities."

Will That Be Cash, Credit, Or Cell?

From our friend J.E.

Will That Be Cash, Credit, Or Cell?
Finally, the technology is at hand to turn phones into virtual wallets

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