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Whatā€™s happening among the MEF community? Hereā€™s your weekly round up of all the latest announcements from the membersā€¦

AmEx buys digital security specialist InAuth

AmEx signalled its commitment to payment security by acquiring InAuth for an undisclosed sum.

InAuth provides mobile device authentication tool for financial institutions, payment networks and merchants. Essentially, it works to secure transactions at the device level (in apps and sites), before they get to the cloud.

AmEx uses InAuth’s technology and made an investment in the firm earlier this year.

AnrĆ© Williams, president, global merchant services and loyalty group, AmEx, said: “This acquisition will help us continue to offer security and protection to our merchants and partners as mobile and online spending drive commerce.”

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Malaysian loyalty giant chooses Wirecard to power reward app

The Berjaya Group, one of Malaysia’s largest conglomerates, has devised a loyalty app called B Infinite ā€“ and itā€™s based on Wirecard technology.

B Infinite gives users a real-time overview of their loyalty points, balance and purchases. They can also personalise the app through filtering merchant offers by category of interest and find out about the latest local merchant flash deals.

Meanwhile participating merchants can access payment tools – provided by Wirecard – without the need to build anything themselves.

B Infinite builds on the success of the BCARD loyalty, which has five million members, 80 merchants and over 4000 stores in its network.

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CLX Communications in bid to buy Sinch

CLX has submitted a binding offer for the acquisition of all shares in its compatriot Swedish company, Sinch AB.

Sinch is a Twilio-type company. It makes it easy for developers to add voice, verification, video, SMS, and instant messaging to apps.

In less than a year, Sinch has signed major clients such as Tango, Truecaller, Easy Taxi, Glide, Nimbuzz, and more.

Johan Hedberg, CEO of CLX, said: “Like most observers, we are convinced that the majority of future communications will move to the cloud. Sinch is a good complement to our existing offering.”

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DIMOCO reveals five big carrier billing predictions for 2017

Gaming and video on demand will fuel continuing growth in charge to bill, says sector giant DIMOCO.

This is one of five major trends the company believes will drive the carrier billing market in 2017.

The trends are:

  • Tech-savvy consumers are looking for better payment options: Gaming will remain the biggest sector for carrier billing. Video on Demand and ePublishing will also grow significantly in 2017.
  • A primary driver will be digital content on multiple screens, including connected TVs and in-car entertainment options.
  • Flexibility and new subscription models are on the rise: including one-off purchases and daily/weekly/monthly subscription plans.
  • New European regulations – PSD2 – to open up new opportunity: online ticketing, donations, gift cards.
  • Physical good carrier billing transactions are on the horizon

DIMOCO enables almost one billion European subscribers to purchase goods and services using carrier billing.

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Gemalto to buy 3M’s identity management business

Digital security giant Gemalto has entered into an agreement to buy 3M’s Identity Management Business for $850 million.

The latter provides biometric tech with a focus in civil identification, border control and law enforcement. Once the acquisition is completed, itĀ will become part of the Gemalto Government Programs business.

“3M’s Identity Management Business and Gemalto perfectly fit, solving authentication and identity management pain points across our customer segments, creating immediate increased differentiation and offering additional long term growth perspectives”, said Philippe VallĆ©e, Gemalto CEO.

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InMobi to monetize Tapjoyā€™s inventory in India

Mobile ad specialist InMobi has signed an agreement to bring ads to Tapjoyā€™s 40 million Indian gamers.

Tapjoy offers developers a platform that analyses freemium traffic and uses tools to increase spending by premium players and targets non-spending players with advertising.

Now, InMobi will manage the delivery of ads in products like 8 Ball Pool, Criminal Case, Shadow Fight 2, and Subway Surfers.

ā€œWe are excited to be Tapjoyā€™s exclusive monetization partner in India. Mobile gaming is growing at an exponential pace in India and through this partnership we are bringing the best of global mobile gaming inventory to advertisers in India who want to reach high quality users,ā€ said Vasuta Agarwal, VP and GM India, InMobi.

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Mediekompaniet Adapt chooses PubMatic to power ad serving

Swedenā€™s media consortium Mediekompaniet has ramped up its commitment to digital advertising by adopting PubMaticā€™s SSP platform and real-time-time analytics solutions.

The companies are already partners. But the addition of the ad server will enable Mediekompaniet Adapt to implement a ā€˜more holistic approach to ad decisioningā€™ across its various types of inventory.

Anna Ireby, VD, Mediekompaniet Adapt (pictured), said: ā€œPubMatic has been instrumental in helping us achieve our programmatic monetisation goals. Their willingness to develop solutions that meet our business needs allowed us to accelerate our programmatic strategy, and weā€™re currently tracking ahead of our initial success milestones.ā€

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CM Telecom becomes first mobile-focused firm to win a Dutch payments licence

The Netherlandsā€™ CM Telecom is on its way to becoming an ā€˜international mobile-first payment instituteā€™.

It has just been licensed by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) for the execution of payment services – the first mobile firm to do so.

That means it can offer services to merchants such as European transactions without an annual transaction limit.

CM CEO Jeroen van Glabbeek said: ā€œThere are now strict rules for payment institutes, which makes obtaining the licence, justifiably, more difficult. During 2016 only two Payments Institutes have been awarded a licence ā€“ previously, as many as 14 companies had been allowed to call themselves Payment Institutes. We will now extend CM Payments payment services to Belgium, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.ā€

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