Mobile Money was a key theme this year and it’s clear your mobile phone will become even closer to the heart of your lifestyle.

There are over 6 billion mobile phones – and only 4 billion tooth brushes on the planet today. Consumers love their mobile whether it’s young people on Facebook or African farmers getting the best price for their crops.

The next big thing will be your phone being used as a wallet. This has been talked about for years. Consumers are not the problem – every piece of research shows over 90% of us are keen to use our mobile for buying things.

The challenge though is huge as today only 5% of the USD$30 trillion spent by consumers today is online. So the 95% that is cash is the big issue.

During MWC, I attended a discussion on the future of Mobile Money where the senior executives from the companies who will change how we live were presenting[i] .

Olivier Prioli, CEO of Gemalto pointed out that in Europe alone the cost of handling cash is £84 billion each year! So banks have a big interest in getting rid of cash – so do Gemalto as they make nearly half of the credit card chips and phone SIM cards!

A lot of the buzz is about putting the ‘bank card’ into your phone and you just wave your phone near the payment machine in a store. This technology is called Near Field Communication (NFC). Your smartphone is more convenient than a credit card because you always carry it and it can hold offers and vouchers that are of interest to you. Gemalto are sure Mobile Money will soon take off.

Google’s Osama Bedier gave the internet giant’s perspective. He said it is too early to know what will work in Mobile Money. But whatever it is –Google plan to be at the heart of it! Google launched its ‘Wallet’ in 2011 in the USA using a Samsung smartphone and are seeing significant growth in 2012.

Google has built an empire with their Adwords advertising. It makes money from the 5% of commerce that is online. Google see the other 95% as ready for change, and the wallet in the phone is the key thing that connects purchases made online and in person.

Osama gave an example: Search for pizza on your phone. You’ll see a restaurant near you, plus you will click on the ad to save an offer to your wallet. Then, when you go into to have your meal you not only pay using your phone but also redeem the voucher. Retailers and consumers in the USA are already using this service!

What about the phones themselves? Rest assured you will have plenty of choice – and it will not be long before every smartphone has NFC and a wallet built in. Samsung may actually displace apple as the market leader one day but Apple will surely remain at the cutting edge. Google themselves have bought Motorola Mobility and it’s worth watching out for Chinese vendors such as Huawei bringing high-quality, low-cost smartphones that have NFC and a wallet.

Credit Card giant Visa’s Bill Gajda was clear – Visa will be at the heart of Mobile Money. Visa will offer mobile operators anywhere in the world a managed service. All they need is a consumer’s mobile phone number and they’ll do the rest. Just as Visa run a credit card service for nearly every bank, they can do the same for mobile operators!

And to prove how fast things are moving – Vodafone Group have just announced a massive global deal with Visa for a Vodafone Mobile Money service with a Visa wallet on the phone.

Mobile Money is not just for the USA and Western Europe. Elsewhere 92% of commerce is physical cash. There is huge potential for money transfer using the phone. In Kenya, the M-Pesa (M for mobile, Pesa is Swahili for money) Mobile Money system does more transactions each day than the largest bank.

PayPal have been the pioneers in making internet purchasing safe and secure. David Marcus, who runs PayPal Mobile, said that in 2011 PayPal had done USD$4 billion in mobile payments. His perspective challenged the view that NFC will dominate. He demonstrated compelling examples where a PayPal account can smooth the checkout experience. For example:
- Enter your phone number and a pin at checkout eliminating the need for a card at all.
- An app used to purchase a coffee where the barcode on your phone is simply scanned at the checkout.
- Japanese company, Yotel sell bedroom ‘pods’ at airports. You rent a room via the app and scan the barcode to unlock the door!
- Cinemas which enable you to buy your ticket via PayPal and jump the queue by showing your QR code.

David said: “The best payment method just gets out of your way. You just pay”. I believe he is right – what is simple and secure will be the winner.

Finally, New York company Payfone’s CEO, Rodger Desai gave his views. As an innovative technology company Payfone are challenging Visa, PayPal etc. with a view that mobile payments needs to be very simple and easy to use, and that checkout process must be much faster than at present. He showed how an app for buying a Heathrow Express ticket that took 200 key strokes – on both Visa and PayPal!

It was a challenging and lively seminar but there was real consensus – Mobile Money is about to explode. We do not know what the winning technology or business model will be but in both developed and developing economies we will all be using our phones more to buy things. If you have a child under five-years-old they may never use a physical wallet.

I left Barcelona inspired. My company, SLA Mobile is part of this market. We have created a service that enables a mobile operator to let its consumers pay for goods on their mobile account – not their bank card. We are launching our service in Europe and Asia in March 2012. These are truly exciting times.

At Mobile World Congress this year SLA Mobile will be basing ourselves in the Mobile Money pavilion (booth 2.1D78). Mobile World Congress is one of the most important dates in the mobile calendar and runs from 27 February to 1 March. This year mobile money is a major theme of the event – as evidenced by the recent feature by Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC. This feature was aired on national UK TV bulletins just last week.

But it’s not just about mobile money – it’s also about a host of other financial transactions via mobile devices. And many operators now see mobile financial transactions as a means of improving their own revenues – and customer relationships. In short, DOB takes advantage of existing trusted relationships between mobile subscribers and mobile operators.

This year we will be demonstrating how, through our Alacrity enablement platform, we can enable network operators themselves to exploit new mobile revenue-driving opportunities. By unlocking and monetising their network assets operators have an opportunity to regain loyal customer relationships. And I’m convinced that there are massive new opportunities for operators adopting this approach.

Direct Operator Billing allows operators the opportunity to rebuild value-rich relationships with their customers. Through our rich operator and partner management service, SLA Mobile can enable Direct Operator Billing for mobile operators and their partners to grow revenue, engage further with existing customers and access new market segments.

This Cloud-based service has the potential for service aggregators and merchants to launch Direct Operator Billing offers within a matter of days. Customers can purchase services and products with itemised payment details appearing on their mobile phone-bill.

We will also be showcasing our Event-Based Marketing and Mobile Money offerings at Mobile World Congress. As a TIBCO partner, SLA Mobile leverages TIBCO’s Complex Event Processing technology to assist mobile operators and partners understand customer behaviour and respond in real-time with relevant and engaging messaging. This reduces customer churn and increases average revenue per user.

We also leverage the power of the TIBCO’s Payment Orchestration technology to help operators explore new and innovative business models in M-Commerce.

Nic Stirk is CEO of SLA Mobile. SLA Mobile will be exhibiting on the Mobile Money Pavilion, booth 2.1D78

This guest blog was posted on 20 February 2012 by the Editor of www.mobilecloudsummit.com

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the mantra of Bill Clinton’s successful 1982 Presidential Campaign – this simple message cut through the fog of political rhetoric and helped Clinton win. SLA Mobile say operators must adopt a similar single-minded focus on merchants’ needs to succeed in the growing M-Commerce market, forecast by Informa to be worth US $37BN in fees by 2016.

What is ‘Direct Operator Billing’?

Direct Operator Billing (DOB) enables merchants to charge the payment for goods and services to the consumer’s mobile phone bill rather than their credit card.  

It is SLA Mobile’s view that mobile operators in both developing and developed markets have a strategic opportunity to use DOB to drive digital commerce revenues and address the ever present ‘Over-The-Top’ (OTT) threat.

However for a DOB strategy to succeed, operators need to embrace the reality that making it work will be “all about the merchants”.

 Some operators are already making plans to get their slice of this market, e.g.  Vodafone Group CEO, Vittorio Colao, briefed analysts in the Q2 FY2011/12 earnings conference that Operator Billing is a significant opportunity. He described it as a “very intuitive and easy way of enabling digital commerce”.

It’s all about the Merchants

Consumer research suggests that consumers in developed markets preferred method of payment for goods on the mobile phone is the mobile bill, above using either their credit card and Paypal (see chart below). In emerging markets there are often no other means of payment beyond cash.

Consumer preferences for paying for goods on mobile phone

  Source: Strategy Analytics Dec 2010 – US and European Research.

 However to fully monetise this opportunity, operators need to take a merchant-centric view of the opportunity. This is because it is merchants who create the innovative services to drive the market not operators.

 Operators also need to recognise they are competing with a well-developed financial services ecosystem in many markets.

 Mobile v Financial Services Value Chain Source: SLA Mobile

 One option is for mobile operators to choose to leave the merchant relationship to others in the value chain as they do in the Premium SMS market.  However operators can build deeper relationships through engaging directly with merchants and aligning common goals of maximising growth. There are a few key success enablers:

1)      The barriers to entry for merchants must be low. Operators need to ensure that the technical effort of integration is low by providing 2.0 APIs and self-service portals. This is a far cry from the manual 1.0 world of Premium SMS (PSMS).

2)      Operators should support merchants in growing the market. Operators need to work with merchants and provide them with the tools to make operator billing easy for web sites, mobile websites and apps.  

3)      The rewards for using operator billing must be high. Operators should use a commercial model that maximises demand for the widest range of products both digital and physical.

This means payouts to merchants that are at least 85% plus – much higher than for Premium SMS. Although operators have the challenge of the ‘cost of cash’ in running the pre-pay network where retailers get a commission on airtime top-ups, they need to get payouts much closer to those of credit cards and Paypal to be competitive.

This will create new market opportunities not just for digital but also physical goods and services.  Merchants will see DOB as a fantastic business opportunity when operators make it easy to use and with attractive terms that enable them to reach new markets – for example those who do not have credit cards.

 4)      Ease of use and great service experience are essential. Merchants must know in real time, what’s been sold, what they get paid and when. Customer care and refund policies etc. need to be of a high standard. For consumers to use the service a lot, the purchase experience needs to be simple, secure and convenient.

Operator concerns can be addressed

 There will be those internally in operators who fear the cannibalisation of PSMS and voice revenues. However PSMS is already in decline and DOB presents a growth opportunity. 

 Others may challenge the lower margins in a DOB M-Commerce strategy than telcos’ current core businesses. However the real strategy should be one that maximises the level of demand, builds significant revenue, and engages consumers who are more loyal.

 Operators must get onto the front foot to address the OTT threat and DOB is central to that.  We predict that the operators who will succeed in the long term in M-Commerce will be those who embrace a merchant-focussed strategy with DOB.

 SLA Mobile help operators unlock and monetise network assets.  We are attending Mobile World Congress MWC12 in Barcelona 27 Feb – 1 Mar 2012 Hall 2.1 Mobile Money Pavilion Stand 78.

Speaking after the lunch company Finance Director, Kevin Drayne said: “Winning the award is a great achievement for SLA Mobile and demonstrates our commitment to pursuing quality excellence and creating real competitive advantage.”

In order to obtain the accreditation SLA Mobile completed an assessment with the help of a Gold Star Approved Advisor, identified areas of strength and under performance and put an action plan in place, which is continually evaluated.  The Gold Star award has been approved by the world-class European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) as a recognised European Benchmark of Better Practice.

Founded in 2003, SLA Mobile is a mobile telecommunications company that creates innovative technology and services to enable mobile network operators to grow revenues through enhanced customer engagement.  Key technology propositions include Direct Operator Billing and Event-Based Marketing.  The company is head-quartered in Belfast with a software development centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Gold Star Service Excellence Accreditation Scheme has been developed by the Centre for Competitiveness in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and The Consumer Council, and is supported by Ulster Bank.  The aim is to provide small to medium enterprises with an effective improvement means to help them put customers and customer-support at the forefront of everything they do.

Kevin Drayne receives the Centre for Competitiveness 2012 Gold Star Customer Service Award from DETI Minister, Arlene Foster at Belfast City Hall.

For further information please contact:

Teresa Purdy

E:  teresa.purdy@sla-mobile.com

T:  00 44 28 9073 6790

W:  www.sla-mobile.com

Drivers have a relaxed attitude to personal safety as they hurtle past donkeys, carts and roadside scenes echoing recent unrest, and my current taxi driver tells me the best way to stay safe on these roads is to play the Koran through the tapedeck.

We’re both praying in different directions, but we get the result we’re hoping for, safe arrival at the Smart Village Business Park, outside Gisa in the shadow of the pyramids.

A counter-point to the ancient surroundings, this is a vibrant hub of high-tech innovation, built to accommodate major multinational and indigenous companies working in Telecommunications and Information Technologies others.

Spacious green areas, waterfalls, artificial lakes and business community leisure areas form a unique backdrop to iconic office buildings. It’s like a modern oasis that looks like it would be more at home in California’s Silicon Valley than an Egyptian desert. Worth remembering that Egyptians have a reputation for innovation with modern engineers still unsure how the great Pyramids were built!
The steady growing number of national and multinational enterprises moving or seeking to move to Smart Village Cairo underlines the business park’s reputation for providing an environment that supports competitiveness, productivity and profitability.

But, it’s the high calibre and ambition of the mostly youthful people that is most awe-inspiring. The Vodafone headquarters, for example, is populated with young 20-30 year olds that are driving its next wave of cutting-edge solutions.

Education is highly valued in Egypt and large companies are capitalising on the highly qualified talent pool and university partnerships to train people in the areas where the world needs skills. These aren’t back office support roles that young Egyptians are fulfilling. It’s high end software development that will make or break future successes.

There is a tangible desire and commitment here from aspiring and ambitious youths to grasp any opportunity for progression. Education offers a clear route from poverty towards a lucrative future.

The thing is, Northern Ireland has the ability and opportunities to far exceed what Egypt is achieving, but we need to do more to transform, inspire and energise new talent. Thankfully organisations like Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP) are taking proactive steps to identify and develop a lasting relationship with our brightest before, during and after they leave.

The Generation Innovation programme, for example, holds two annual events to identify some of NI’s most promising pupils and invite them and their parents into regular high value events. The next one takes place in November and I’m excited to proud that my daughter is among the students who were nominated by their school to meet 40 highly successful innovators in local science and technology companies like SLA Mobile.

Success is earned by going further and learning again and again. We need to shift mindsets towards proactivity. In Israel, for example, students are brought together and told they are special and have a role to play in making the economy successful. Our students must be given similar direction and encouragement if we are to compete at the best of our ability.

In SLA Mobile we work with a lot of nationalities and the capability of Northern Ireland talent rates highly amongst the world’s best. It always strikes me how similar New Zealand people are to those back home, but the big difference is the motivation to work overseas, build experience and get going. Working in London or Dublin is regarded as a daunting experience to some at home, but in New Zealand travelling to Australia; Kuala Lumpur; Indonesia and Europe are common work routes.

If the dusty roads of Egypt can lead to international innovation-led business, then so too can the well travelled highways of Northern Ireland. We just need to give our next generation of economic navigators a better roadmap and the confidence to choose the route to success.

But with Direct Operator Billing things are about to change…meaning that operators can rapidly build new merchant relationships and high volume, secure mCommerce channels.

The mobile payment opportunity is great.  Smart Mobile devices are becoming pervasive – across all demographic groups.  Moreover, in many developing economies mobile payment represents a significant opportunity to create new platforms for secure monetary transactions.

At SLA Mobile, we believe the mobile payment potential is still largely untapped – because we believe that the future of mobile payment embraces the most obvious means of exchange with a secure and trusted party – the mobile phone service provider.  And we’re working with operators to allow them to build richer, revenue-generating opportunities with their own customers.

Direct Operator Billing – for goods and services via the subscriber’s own mobile bill – is still in its infancy.  But many believe (and we agree with them) it’s an idea whose time has come.

Until recently the only services consumed by subscribers that were billed directly to the mobile phone bill were ring tones or wallpapers – with payment via Premium SMS.  Direct Operator Billing, however, allows a myriad of goods and services to be billed directly to the mobile subscriber’s bill.  With the emergence of near-field communications functionality and QR code readers on mobile devices traditional high street goods and services can also be purchased in this way – safely, securely and with vastly better customer, operator and merchant related business processes.

This is part of a briefing paper we have prepared on Direct Operator Billing.  To get a copy of the full paper, click here.  

This is a fundament shift in how we interact with the world around us from keeping in touch, to buying pizza or sharing documents. The four companies driving the overall technology revolution are arguably the world’s biggest brands Google, Facebook, Amazon and of course Apple – which recently became the most valuable company in the US. Note that I’d don’t list Micrsosoft! And in five years time don’t be surprised of two on the list are actually Chinese companies.

It’s no surprise that all four are competing for your wallets but central to their strategies are the devices we keep next to them, our mobile phones. In the last two weeks Google actually bought Motorola’s mobile phone division. Put that in context – Motorola invented the world’s first mobile phone. Across the globe, customers are hungry for the next wave of clever gadgets, apps and services and that demand has given the big firms pole position in the international mobile market.

Mobile Network operators, formerly the powerhouse in the sector, face a genuine threat to their role. In fact, some industry analysts claim they could become extinct or reduced to a utility provider role within five years as companies like Apple and Google steal a march on their customer relationships.

The ongoing tussle is rapidly up scaling technologies and services for customers and giving Northern Ireland firms an opportunity to play their part on the global stage.

At SLA Mobile, for example, our strategy is global in focus but local in implementation. Our offices in Belfast and Kuala Lumpur have helped us clinch contracts with network operators – from the USA to Australia, South Africa and China – as they look to fight back by unlocking the potential of their network assets and identify innovative revenue streams

We aren’t developing applications ourselves, but instead offer a platform, Alacrity, that allows telecoms operators, such as Vodafone, to easily link up with application developers in any country. This means organisations can reach and bill any end user on any network without having to enter into multiple arrangements with network operators in each jurisdiction they work in.

It’s a simple concept, but with big potential. Ultimately it means that services and applications can hit the market faster, development costs are massively reduced and combine handset, mobile and social networking data into clever new ideas.

Working across multiple countries and time zones, new technologies have also been critical to help us reduce costs and keep our projects on track. Cloud computing has been making waves in recent months, but it’s a concept that were quick to adopt over the last two years.

With information stored virtually in ‘military specification’ servers and accessed through mobile and web-based applications, such as Google Docs or Microsoft 365, the approach allows our teams in Belfast and KL to simultaneously access and collaborate on documents improving our business efficiency and saving our clients money.

And for any NI director reading this article sit up now. Ask your IT Manager about Cloud Computing and its ability to save you 50-80% on your IT costs. There is a revolution going on with Cloud.

Just a few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that projects would be stored remotely rather than on a local server. Today it’s the other way around. Cloud computing makes it easier to establish connections between sites and speed up project delivery.

The world is definitely becoming a smaller place and we’re all seeing farther as a result.

At the recent “Managing Devices, Applications and Services” conference organised by the Device Management Forum in Maidenhead, U.K., a number of discussions and presentations addressed a wide range of aspects within M2M and the Internet of Things – such as standardisation, information provenance, consumer applications, e/m health and drivers behind M2M and IoT.

Adding a fresh and innovative message to the field, Philip Stanfield, Director of Vodafone Business at SLA Mobile, captured the attention of the international audience present with the “Smart Enablers: Quicker route to market” presentation. This presentation outlined three simple messages:

- there is an opportunity for all when operators unlock their network assets
- there is an opportunity to monetise Direct Operator Billing now
- this can be done at 2.0 speeds and not old world telco pace

These opportunities were here and now, and with three simple yet effective illustrations and a detailed case study from Vodafone Ireland, SLA Mobile’s Alacrity solution demonstrated the benefits and innovation that could be achieved when looking to enrich M2M and enterprise applications.

Attended by partners of the wider M2M ecosystem, including such international companies as Ericsson IPX, Samsung, Numerex, Vodafone and KPN, the growth and development of M2M is certainly set to continue its impact on consumer and enterprise agendas in the coming years.

Craig Richards

Craig Richards, previously Director Asia Pacific, is to take on a new role at SLA Mobile – driving forward the company’s global engineering and operations function.  With the appointment of Jonathan Ng as Director responsible for APAC, Craig will become Director of Operations & Engineering.  He will continue to be based in Kuala Lumpur – the centre of excellence for SLA Mobile’s operations and engineering delivery team.

Commenting on Craig’s new role, Nic Stirk, SLA Mobile’s CEO says, “Craig is a level-headed, business focussed technologist, who has consistently delivered projects to some of the world’s leading mobile operators.  While Craig will continue to work closely with Vodafone, in particular, in APAC and Middle East regions, his new role will focus more on building SLA Mobile’s platforms and products for future growth.”

According to Craig he’s looking forward to the new challenge.  “With our Alacrity enablement platform SLA Mobile is well positioned to support mobile operators building a mobile future where more and more enhanced mobile services are delivered via the cloud.  We have an exciting story to tell in that space and I’m looking forward to building compelling solutions on the back of our highly extensible Alacrity platform.”

Related articles

• Alacrity Enables Network Operators to Build the Mobile Future (slamobileblog.com)
• Jonathan Ng joins SLA Mobile as Director for AP region (slamobileblog.com)
• Top 20 Mobile Operators in World – Bharti 5th in subscribers, but 17th on revenue! (trak.in)

Social networks represent the next wave opportunity for mobile services

Craig Richards of SLA Mobile argues why Alacrity plays a critical role in enabling the mobile future

It’s clear that the mobile market is expanding and changing at a remarkable pace.   Increasingly, mobility is the driving force behind cloud computing.   Cloud-based resources – such as social media, media sharing, and search engines – are, more and more, being accessed from mobile devices rather than traditional desktops.  The estimates vary but it’s probably fair to say that about 50% of Facebook ‘interactions’ are via mobile devices.   And a significant industry has sprung up – app stores, mobile advertising and location-specific sales promotion – around the pervasive consumer mobile phenomenon.  Soon a similar phenomenon will hit the enterprise too.

However, network operators are often being left behind in the scramble to create the ‘new mobility’.  So-called over-the-top (OTT) players such as Google and Apple are winning the publicity war (and lucrative customer relationships). Network customers often have much deeper and richer relationships with the big app stores or social media sites than the underlying network providers.

This doesn’t have to be the case.  Operators have the opportunity to take advantage of their customer relationships and network assets to build new hybrid propositions that engage customers – right at the heart of the social networks that are the driving force of consumer interaction and connectivity.   That’s why we see the emergence of a new type of mobility that also embraces the richness of the mobile network itself.

Our Alacrity platform enables three categories of customer focused solution – utilizing core network assets.  These hybrid solutions deliver rich, revenue-enhancing customer experience focused on mobile commerce (enabled by direct operator billing), customer loyalty & sales promotion.  But the key thing is that the services are delivered right within Facebook or other social media sites.  But this is just the start.  Over time operators will also want to support the development of M2M cloud applications, enterprise applications and other services – and Alacrity will provide a supportive and enabling platform for future growth on public cloud networks (such as Facebook) as well as virtual private clouds.

Alacrity allows innovative propositions to be developed in-house or via external aggregators and partners – and achieves this through what we call enablers:

• Direct operator billing and m-Commerce
• Extensions to social network assets
• Mobile and fixed APIs
• Revenue settlement
• Customer analytics
• Application Developer On-Boarding

The SLA Mobile Alacrity platform has been utilised by a leading operator here in the Asia Pacific region to allow value added services to be promoted and shared among Facebook users.

The operator’s Facebook application, based on a social shopfront application framework, delivers a Caller Tones solution as a fresh channel to subscribers.   It turned a ‘Fan page’ environment into a revenue earning service.   The fan page allowed subscribers to engage with and provision mobile services – from within their favourite social media environment.  Similarly, a European tier one carrier wanted to create a partner ecosystem that would drive e-commerce activity – expanding the use of their often underutilized network capabilities.   SLA Mobile worked to “on-board” a series of partner aggregators to integrate new mobile network APIs into their development plans.   The result is a host of new cutting-edge ‘mobile cloud’ services enabled by an active community of developers.   Moreover, the operator now has a clear opportunity to develop new service propositions that take further advantage of the mobile web and underlying network assets.

Craig Richards is Director of Operations & Engineering at SLA Mobile