Posts Tagged ‘Mobile Payment’

Use Mobile Payment for rebuilding Haitian Banking

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Haiti faced one of the worst earthquakes in the history of mankind leaving it completely devastated. It also made sure that more than 33% of the banks and ATM’s in the country are included in this massive phenomenon of destruction. Although before the catastrophe hit them only 10% of the population were using traditional banking.

The U.S. Agency for International Development joining hands with The Gates Foundation to ensure a complete makeover by funding $10 million to encourage cell phone banking and payments through mobile. This is an effort to revive the financial ecosystem in Haiti and take the funds to the poor.

Companies who will put up mobile financial services in Haiti shall be awarded with cash prizes. The first nation that implements a mobile banking service within the coming 6 months and achieves its specified goals shall be entitled to get $2.5 million dollar. The company following them at second position by achieving the target in 12 months would receive $1.5 million. The rest of the amount will be distributed to those who process the initial 5 million transactions.

Mark Suzman, acting president of the Global Development Program at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stated, “Out of the ruins of Haiti’s tragic earthquake, there is an unprecedented opportunity to improve the lives of millions of Haitians and unlock the country’s economic potential through mobile money. Making financial services widely available to the poorest families in the developing world can help break the cycle of poverty by giving them a safe place to save, guard against risks, build assets, and provide opportunities for the next generation.”

M-Pesa, a similar initiative in Kenya has already reached 9 million people which is about 40% of the adult population of Kenya in just about 3 years from its inception. This has tremendously boosted people involved with the initiative in Haiti. By using M-Pesa once can pay off a variety of services such as taxi fares, school fees etc through their phone which resulted in an increase by 5% to 30% in their household income.

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MasterCard creates “PaysPass” to facilitate Mobile Payments

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

MasterCard has come out with its new programme to ensure its payment infrastructure accessible to Developers to facilitate Mobile Payments and other commerce improvisation. MasterCard declared its alliance with 2 different companies to make its “PayPass” a smooth and no interference system for Mobile devices.

Inside Contactless has evolved a NFC-based solution that will be integrated in MasterCard’s PayPass payment Mobile App. These will be in the form of stickers which can be put into Mobile devices to convert them into NFC Credit Cards. CPI Card Group is the start up company that’s facilitating these stickers.

This has made the user friendliness of PayPass with debit and credit card being carried forward to Mobile phones. Bringing together Mobile Payments, NFC and Mobile devices along with the widely available MasterCard PayPass has resulted into a unique and effective solution that will for surely draw more customers towards it than any other solutions that’s being designed from the beginning.

Josh Peirez, MasterCard’s Chief Innovation Officer said, “A big part of the Strategy is to be able to harness the innovation of others in the developer community to really push our business forward.” He added, “You’re seeing quite different ways people are paying for digital goods, but you haven’t really seen that translate into physical goods. It’s still really hard to buy a physical item from your phone.”

The idea of inserting the NFC technology inside a sticker is being very rational. This would make possible any device available in the Market unlike the OEM’s to integrate the technology in new handsets. The progress of manufacturing new NFC-enabled devices has been rather slow, much below expectation however one feels that this alliance would set the pace in the right direction. It would be very fascinating to follow this Development and see what the future outcome of this promising initiative is.

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Mocapay becomes a Mobile Marketing Provider by New York State Restaurant Association

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Mocapay has been inducted as the official Mobile Marketing Provider by New York State Restaurant Association. This comes as a huge bonus to Mocapay to be associated with one of the largest Restaurant Association in the U.S.

Mocapay provides an only of its kind Mobile Platform for embedded Marketing Engine. The New York State Restaurant Association will be exploiting it to create and apportion Marketing Campaigns specific to the city of New York. It shall also use it to notify members regarding relevant legislative issues, industry news, seminar and event updates along with supplementary news.

Comprehensive Campaign analytics with complete improvisation of Campaigns and promotions as per the organisation’s needs with the help of a specific dashboard tailor made for them. The tools offered in the dashboard shall allow New York State Restaurants Association to develop focused Campaigns and administer feedbacks instantaneously. This would enable them to keep an eye on the success of the specific Campaigns.

The most significant aspect of this alliance between New York State Restaurant Association and Mocapay, is the later’s competence to offer the most unique Mobile Solution that allows a safe and original payment solution. Mocapay provides a complete Solution through this Mobile Platform to business houses of closed-loop loyalty, private-label credit and gits along with financial institutions which provides open-looped prepaid, debit and credit.

Andrew Rigies, Director of Operations at  Greater New York City Chapters, New York State Restaurants Association stated, “Mobile is becoming one of the restaurant industry’s more effective tools to communicate with customers and drive traffic to restaurants. Our relationship with Mocapay reinforces the trend the Industry is seeing regarding the need to adopt and integrate Mobile Technologies including Mobile Marketing Campaigns to support customer acquisition and retention.”

The New York State Restaurant Association is existing for over 75 years now and has its members from across various functions of the industry spread all over the state. The 80,000 plus members come from various segments such as Caterers, College and University Foodservice Providers, Contract Feeders, Country Clubs, Franchised Restaurants, Independent Restaurants, Purveyors, Post-Secondary Students Majoring in Foodservice or Hospitality Management.

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Mobile Payments is possible in the University of Denver’s Coffee Shop

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Mocapay’s Software-as-a-Service Technology has empowered the Mobile users to pay through their Mobile phones.

Beans the coffee shop at The University of Denver Daniels College Of Business’ School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management is the latest beneficiary. The authorities have allowed their students to use their Mobile phones to buy food and beverage at Beans. It will also leverage the Platform’s embedded messaging engine, letting it customize Mobile Marketing Campaigns to target students.

“The relationship with Mocapay not only provides a new solution for students to conduct secure, Mobile transactions on campus but it allows them to experience first-hand how emerging technologies influence the hospitality industry,” said David L. Corsun, Ph.D, Director and Associate Professor of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.

The University also plans to expand the experience into the classroom by integrating Mocapay Platform into their curriculum. They feel with Mobile Technology quickly becoming an essential part of the hospitality industry’s business process the decision is an absolute must.

Through the relationship, students and faculty will be able to conduct Mobile transactions at the point-of-sale, access their account balance, transaction history and reload their account, all from their Mobile phone. The feature Mobile gifting allows real-time-gift-giving directly to another Mobile phone.

The University has developed a curriculum that focuses on important issues such as ethical business practice, globalization, entrepreneurship and values-based leadership. Mocapay provides a new channel for the merchants to expand their loyalty and gift programs by mobilizing Sales and Marketing to reach customers anytime.

Beans, the student-run coffee shop, will be able to encourage purchases and build a stronger brand loyalty using Mocapay. It provides a solution for conducting secure Mobile transactions on campus and gives them cutting-edge experience in deployment of Mobile Technology within the hospitality industry. Mocapay has all the potential to redefine the way customers would pay off their bills in a coffee shop in future.

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