Mobile contracting & NFC services: what is the way forward?

With the deployment of NFC services, two key drivers need to be particularly addressed:

1. Adequate service offering to the end user
2. Trusted process to high value service subscription.

Focusing on the latter implies for Service Providers and Mobile Operators to re-create on the mobile phone the condition of physical secure subscription.

NFC & Mobile Identity - Two Sides of the Same Coin

I have recently spoken to my colleague Marc Printz, Mobile Identity Product Manager at sicap, about the SIM cards required for Mobile ID services. Some of the mobile operators are concerned about the availability of PKI-SIM cards required for Mobile ID services and even more so about the necessity for the subscribers to exchange their old SIM cards in order to be able to use such services.

As most operators are looking to launch NFC in the very near future, it is worth in this context to look at the relationship between NFC and Mobile Identity. As it turns out, they are two sides of the same coin. Moreover, they have a symbiotic relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship. And here is why. 

Social Media + Payments, Mobile Style - Part II

 

Sicap’s research project with the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion has been looking at mobile social media and how it intersects with mobile payments. Our guest blogger Tom Boellstorff shares exciting insights which have been uncovered thus far, in an interim report.

First part of this post has been published during this summer.

This glimpse into the early findings from our research project “Landscaping Mobile Social Media and Mobile Payments in Indonesia” includes emerging insights into:

International Remittance for Mobile Operators : The business is ramping up !

We see more and more mobile operators launching International Remittance services. After Orange Madagascar a few weeks ago, it was the turn of Vodafone to make the headlines by announcing the connection of M-Pesa Mobile Money service with BICS International Remittance Hub.

Thus, it is now possible via the internet to send money to an Orange Money m-wallet owned by a Malagasy.

Benefits for the mobile operators are numerous:

Do you know what SIM, ESE and SD have in common?

All these items can be used as a secure element for NFC or other applications requiring security such as payments, ID, security & access control and ticketing. In fact, following our post around NFC and security, several questions rose around Secure Elements. It seems that acronyms and concepts remain fuzzy and that it is not obvious to appreciate pro’s and con’s for each of them.