Mobile Payments World is the on-line newsletter from the publishers of European Card Review, Europe’s leading payment cards magazine, complemented by Mobile Payments – a hard copy quarterly magazine distributed at all of the major finance and telecoms shows, conferences and exhibitions. Like ECR, its mission is to record and explain trends in payments and to do this in a rigorous, professional way.
Published 22 times a year with a circulation of 3,000 copies per issue, MPW provides up to the minute news and analysis of developments, trends and key players in the mobile payments industry. Launched in 2002, it offers subscribers the unique resource of a comprehensive, searchable archive where they can look up MPW’s coverage of the latest technologies, initiatives, pilot projects, vendors, pricing and strategies.
MPW’s editorial excellence is complimented by a unique industry Vendor Zone which holds information and contact details on companies involved in mobile payments and mobile commerce.
Companies which supply products and services to the mobile payments market can use MPW’s website - which records 60,000 hits each month - as a channel to meet their marketing needs. Readers include key decision makers who buy and influence buying decisions and who read the newsletter closely because of its high editorial standards.
MPW is committed to monitoring developments in mobile payments wherever they occur globally. And the potential base of mobile payment users continues to expand everywhere, reaching 2.5 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide (source: GSM Association). Many of them have become accustomed to use their mobile phones for payments for parking, ringtones - and even London’s ‘congestion charge.’
In Korea, two of the world’s most innovative mobile network operators are enabling their customers’ phones with electronic wallet capability based on Visa’s Mobile Platform and rolling out a nationwide system. In many large shops and restaurants, customers can use their mobile phone as a credit card to pay for goods and services.
But current levels of activity will pale into insignificance over the next few years as m-payments go mass market. TowerGroup projects 1 billion macro-payment transactions (ticketing, remote internet, purchases) and 25 billion micro-payment transactions (MMS - multimedia messaging services - digital content, gaming, MP3 music downloads, parking meters) to be conducted via mobile phones by 2007.
MPW has now covered a series of high profile launches of m-payment projects and systems, including those by some of the world’s biggest companies - Vodafone and Microsoft, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, Orange, Telefonica, T-mobile and many other regional based MNO’s.
The GSMA – the governing body for GSM operators – now has cross operator open working trials in both SMS and NFC technology working in conjunction with the banks. Also the major card association’s led by MasterCard and Visa are both aligning their current ‘contactless card’ roll-out, which have proved a huge success with consumers and merchants alike, to go onto the mobile channel.
With working business models already in place and with an obvious benefit for provider and client, mobile payments will be an exciting medium for the next few years. MPW will continue to be the markets’s prime supplier of the essential news and analysis subscribers need to:
• Make critical decisions
• Evaluate vendor products and services
• Understand business strategies
• Network with competitors and strategic partners
For further details on tailored consulting packages for your company see our consulting home page - http://www.mobilepaymentsworld.com/consulting/index.htm