Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade organisation for mobile operators, aims to get cellphones being used to make payments at the point of sale, worldwide.
The move follows the GSMA's program - announced last year - to define a common global approach to enabling near field communications (NFC), the radio technology used to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems. "By embedding mobile contactless services such as credit and debit payments in the SIM card the mobile industry will extend the role of mobile phones in customers' everyday lives," GSMA says.
Fourteen mobile operators representing more than 900 million mobile users are participating in the 'Pay-Buy Mobile' initiative, which seeks to define a common global experience for mobile phone payments on which seamlessly interoperable services will be provided. They are Cingular Wireless, now part of the new AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom.
GSMA says that, whilst various forms of mobile payment trials and services have been announced, "this is the first truly global approach to facilitate payment by mobile."
Secure, transparent mobile payments will be made using a SIM/Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) card in mobile phones plus contactless/NFC technology. "The result will be an interoperable and transparent service for mobile customers, financials institutions and the banks," the organisation says.
The initiative will begin with a business model analysis followed by an end-to-end trial in Korea later this year. The trial will be led by Korean mobile network operator KTF and will include all key participants in the value chain: from banks and credit card providers to retail organisations and handset manufacturers.
LG Electronics will provide handsets for the trial and KTF will share the results with the GSMA's operator community. Following this, similar trials will be deployed involving other operators and financial institutions.
According to GSMA, mobile phone based transactions are already becoming commonplace in South Korea, where there are already more than 12 million mobile payment enabled handsets in circulation, with 80,000 terminal payment machines in shops, restaurants and cafes.
David Bass
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