Realistic approach for mobile payments group
(31 July 2012 – New Zealand) Eftpos operator Paymark is supporting a joint venture between mobile phone companies and banks to make it easy for people to pay for goods using mobiles.
Bank-owned Paymark, along with phone service providers Vodafone, Telecom and 2degrees announced in April that they would join forces to build near-field communications (NFC) technology into new smartphones.
The scheme would let eftpos users pay for goods in shops using their mobiles in the same way that they can use Snapper and contactless credit cards.
The project was complex but the parties had not been discouraged by the collapse of a similar venture in Holland earlier this month, said Paymark head of product and partners Phil Deason.
Deason said the group had decided to complete a business case before deciding whether to form a joint venture, probably ''early in the new year''.
Collaboration would be important in New Zealand because it had the complexity and sophistication of a large market, but without the scale, Deason said. ''As a result of that we have got to be smart and we have got quite a good history of co-operation.
''Our intent is to provide low-cost, ubiquitous access to consumer mobile devices, so any organisation that wants to put something on them, whether it is a bank or a transport operator, can compete.''
The group knew the order of magnitude of the cost, but the demand for NFC payments was still quite uncertain, Deason said. ''I think we have got to go into it being realistic that it is quite unlikely to make money for while.''
The scheme would let eftpos users pay for goods in shops using their mobiles in the same way that they can use Snapper and contactless credit cards.
The project was complex but the parties had not been discouraged by the collapse of a similar venture in Holland earlier this month, said Paymark head of product and partners Phil Deason.
Deason said the group had decided to complete a business case before deciding whether to form a joint venture, probably ''early in the new year''.
Collaboration would be important in New Zealand because it had the complexity and sophistication of a large market, but without the scale, Deason said. ''As a result of that we have got to be smart and we have got quite a good history of co-operation.
''Our intent is to provide low-cost, ubiquitous access to consumer mobile devices, so any organisation that wants to put something on them, whether it is a bank or a transport operator, can compete.''
The group knew the order of magnitude of the cost, but the demand for NFC payments was still quite uncertain, Deason said. ''I think we have got to go into it being realistic that it is quite unlikely to make money for while.''
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