Mobile phone operator Hutchison 3G will offer mobile payment
services when it launches in the UK by the end of this year.
To use the service, retailers will have to make changes to their
business processes and Web sites, and analysts have warned of the
lack of industry standards for mobile payment systems.
Adam Daum, chief analyst at Gartner, said, "There is currently no
industry standard for mobile payments in the UK. It is difficult to
know which mobile payment system will win out. The good news is
that on some [mobile payment] systems, implementation is easy. A
small amount of software code is written and downloaded to
point-of-sale systems."
Hutchison 3G's mobile payment system will be powered by software
from Network365 across the phone operator's seven licences.
Although the phone operator would not confirm the details of its
proposed service, there are two possible models for payment using
Network365's software.
One is essentially a scaled-down version of payment systems used on
desktop PCs. Web sites adapted for viewing on a mobile phone allow
the consumer to make payments by credit card. The other is a
pre-pay method where the consumer charges their mobile phone
account with funds and the mobile operator effectively becomes a
payment service provider.
Retailers wanting to take advantage of Hutchison 3G's service will
have to make changes to their business processes and possibly their
Web sites depending on the payment model they chose to
support.
To allow customers to pay with a credit card, merchants should have
themselves and their products included on a third-party shopping
portal or have their Web site adapted to formats accessible by
mobile phone.
In the pre-pay model consumers would make payments by activating
the transmission of a payment code to the merchant. This would
effectively take the place of credit card details in existing
systems.
The retailer's business processes and applications must be adapted
to accept the new payment method. Web sites would have a
mobile-payment button and the seller must be able to receive the
payment code which authenticates the funds transfer to the retailer
from the mobile operator.