What’s happening among the MEF membership? Here’s your weekly round up of all the latest announcements from MEF Members including product launches, partnerships, research insights and more…
Wirecard gets behind UK’s Pay by Bank mobile project
Wirecard has joined the payment providers backing Vocalink’s Pay by Banking app mobile scheme.
Vocalink manages the UK’s faster payments backbone. And as part of this, it has created a scheme to link bank accounts to phone numbers (under the Paym brand) and also backed Zapp, a service that lets people push a payment to a merchant direct from their banking app.
A number of digital payment processors support Zapp. Now, Wirecard has joined them. It will incorporate the Pay by Bank app into its suite of payment options for UK merchants.
“Wirecard and Pay by Bank … is a convenient match for consumers and merchants wanting to accept trusted mobile payments,” said Georg von Waldenfels, executive vice president of consumer solutions at Wirecard. “We’re delighted to be working together to deliver mobile payments to millions of consumers.”
VocaLink says Barclays, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, HSBC and Lloyds Bank have signed up to launch Pay by Bank.
Visa, Mastercard speed up drive to tokenise digital wallets
Tokenisation is seen as the best way to improve security in digital transactions. Now, Visa and Mastercard have pledged to accelerate its adoption.
They have signed an agreement to harmonise the use of tokens in Visa Checkout and Masterpass, the companies’ respective digital wallets. Thus Visa can request tokenised Mastercard payment credentials and vice versa.
The companies use tokens to replace the actual card numbers, and then de-scramble them safely in the cloud. Any token intercepted by a hacker would be worthless.
“This agreement will ensure that each network’s wallet solutions can continue to stay open — and can add the extra security of using tokens in place of real card numbers,” said James Anderson, group executive for platforms in the emerging payments division at Mastercard.
Mahindra Comviva launches ‘Business of Tomorrows’ report
Indian content and commerce specialist has identified the big issues facing mobile operators in a major new study.
The ‘Business of Tomorrows’ report quizzed operators about issues including mobile payments, 5G, content, customer analytics and mobile broadband.
It revealed that 75 per cent of respondents say IoT will drive growth and that 32 per cent of respondents believe smart city deployment could emerge as the biggest usage case for 5G.
Manoranjan Mohapatra, CEO of Mahindra Comviva, said: “Fuelled by booming demand for mobile data, the opportunities in the digital content and mobile financial services and under pinned by the promise of 5G, operators clearly have a major role in shaping the Business of Tomorrows.”
Mahindra Comviva is also supporting the MEF’s Executive Insights video series. See the first edition, with Orange Mobile’s Bruno Mettling, here.
China Mobile works with Gemalto to power move into connected car
Gemalto is teaming up with China Mobile to offer a platform for vehicle makers who want to build connected cars.
The world’s biggest MNO will use Gemalto’s LinqUS On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) Subscription Management solution and its GSMA compliant Embedded SIMs (eSIMs). It will blend them with its data networks to give car makers a platform to provide infotainment, navigation support, safety services and vehicle diagnostics.
“Today, Gemalto has deployed more than 20 On-Demand Connectivity solutions, and has executed at least 300 over-the-air (OTA) deployments around the globe. We also have the largest portfolio of M2M and IoT solutions and services, including eSIM, which are compliant with the latest GSMA specifications,” said Suzanne Tong-Li, President, Greater China & Korea at Gemalto.
“With such rich experience and expertise, we believe we are in a sweet spot to help operators like China Mobile make a successful leap to IoT.”
