ANZ has released an iPhone application that allows customers to send money to anyone with an Australian bank account using only their mobile phone number as an identifier.

It is the first application launched by a major Australian bank that offers a "pay by mobile" function, which allows users to pay a third party without knowing the recipient's bank account number. 

Users of the application, called goMoney, simply enter the mobile number of the person they wish to pay, and the amount.

Vodacom expects to sign up 10m M-Pesa mobile money users within three years.

The telecommunications operator’s director in charge of the product’slaunch, Romeo Kumalo, revealed the ambitious target during the product’s launch in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, on Tuesday.

The 10m target is particularly ambitious given that the total unbanked population in SA is not much higher than that, at 13m people.

Vodacom has launched the M-Pesa project, first pioneered by Safaricom in Kenya, in conjunction with Nedbank.

Entitled Mobile Remote Payments General Guidelines for Ecosystems, the white paper focuses on payments where two parties are able to send and receive or exchange funds using the mobile channel, irrespective of where they are located. For example person-to-person mobile money transfer or payment to merchant, where the mobile device does not need to be in close proximity to a point-of-sale terminal.

With contributions from a multitude of players from the banking, mobile and payments industry that represent the entire ecosystem including Caisse d’Epargne, Deutsche Bank, DnB NOR, Nokia, Nordea, Royal Bank of Scotland and TeliaSonera, the white paper highlights three key findings:

• The important role of the mobile phone number and how this can be used instead of bank account details. This enables a payer to initiate a fund transfer using the payee’s phone number and without the need to know their bank account or card details, ensuring customer convenience and confidentiality.
• The needs of different markets vary considerably and what might be an efficient solution for one market might not be acceptable for another. Organisations will need to consider many factors when selecting the operating model to deploy.
• Establishing and agreeing a roadmap to mass-market interoperability is key to drive adoption. The white paper suggests that financial institutions should start with today’s infrastructure and rules, and gradually evolve towards direct interoperability through standardisation and small system changes.

Ron van Wezel, Chairman of Mobey Forum and Director of Emerging Payment Streams at Deutsche Bank, comments: “Mobey Forum has been at the forefront of mobile financial services for ten years. Now that the market is starting to adopt mobile payments we believe that the time is right to provide industry guidelines to assist payment providers in deciding how to access the mobile remote payments market effectively. This will help to promote an open infrastructure, which in turn will avoid market fragmentation and improve interoperability for the benefit of the consumer.”

Liisa Kanniainen, Executive Director of Mobey Forum, adds: “Although there is a lot of media attention and industry discussion regarding proximity payments, such as contactless and near-field-communication technology, Mobey Forum identifies that it is also important to engage in a debate regarding mobile remote payments as the market has huge global potential. Stakeholders within this ecosystem want to bring technology to market quickly and effectively by using existing payment infrastructures and standard payment instruments, such as credit transfers between bank accounts and card payments. This paper offers the first real insight into how this can be achieved in a sustainable and scalable approach that will result in the delivery of convenient payment services that today’s mobile customer expects.”

In summary the white paper provides insight regarding the mobile remote payments ecosystem’s components, its stakeholders and their roles initiating, processing and completing a mobile remote payment. It also presents commercially viable operating models required to facilitate a sustainable industry approach, and a comprehensive gap analysis that highlights how existing payment instruments can be leveraged to maximise return on legacy technology investments. In conclusion the document summarises core processes that will need to be developed or enhanced by providers of mobile remote payment services, such as registration and set-up, sending and requesting payments and customer support.

About Mobey Forum:

Mobey Forum is the global leader in defining a sustainable and prosperous mobile financial services ecosystem. Established in 2000, the member-driven organisation brings together leading financial institutions, mobile network operators, mobile handset manufacturers, payment processors and vendors committed to accelerating the mass-market deployment of user-friendly mobile financial services by promoting open and secure technology standards. www.mobeyforum.org 

 The market for NFC (Near Field Communication) mobile payments in the U.S. is in the nascent stage with an adoption rate of only 1.7%; this represents a huge opportunity for early movers offering the same. Adopting NFC mobile payment will open new revenue channels for banks as well as mobile operators as more than 94% of the U.S. population owns a mobile phone, and 60% of these have a card slot in their mobile phone.

With the help of NFC technology, banks will be able to tap micro transactions made by cash, representing around 20% of the total transactions in the U.S. This will also help banks to capture the growing GEN Y population as well as the huge underbanked and unbanked population.

In 2009, the value of mobile payment transactions in the U.S. was $5.2 billion, constituting 6% of the global value of mobile payment transactions; this is expected to reach $56.7 in 2015, growing at a CAGRof 49.19%. The share of U.S. in 2015 will reach approximately 10.6% of the global mobile payment transaction.

Topics covered in the report include...

• Market Structure
• Segmentation Of U.S. Payments Market By Type And Size
• Opportunity For Nfc Based Payments - Huge Cash Transactions
• Mobile Payments - Market Estimate
• Winning Imperatives For Deploying Nfc Mobile Payments
• Value Proposition Of Nfc Mobile Payments
• Nfc Is The Future Of Mobile Payments
• Future Outlook Of Mobile Payments Market
• Case Studies
• Vendor Analysis 

TD Bank is one of the top 15 banks in the USA – serving mostly the North East. It has announced a new free-to-download mobile application for both Android and iPhone – with a Blackberry app to follow in the near future.

What does it do?

The TD Bank app is one of those nice banking applications that gives you access to the kind of features you’d expect from your on-line portal. You can check your balances, transfer funds, make bill and loan payments, etc.