|
APPLICATIONS & SERVICES
Q. What types of mobile payment applications does MoPay support?
A. MoPay can be used for any financial transaction that involves the transfer of credit or value from one account to another using the mobile phone. Other types of applications include
- Top-up of any type of prepaid account
- SMS-based account payment
- M-payments involving select merchants where PoS infrastructure is not readily available
- Card-transaction confirmation by card holders at PoS or MOTO/WO environments – PIN authorization of transactions using handsets
- Low-value payments or ‘micro-payments’ including gift cards, transportation, tolls
- Person-to-person payments
For all applications, the mobile handset serves as a transaction authorization device and require use of a special PIN or ‘passcode’ for user authentication.
Q. Give me an example of an SMS-based account payment service.
A. Any type of account that a consumer would normally receive via post and pay by cash, direct debit, cheque or credit/debit cards can be paid using the service. A popular application requested in many regions around the world is utility – electricity - account payment via SMS. For this application, the user receives an SMS notification that the account is due; the user responds with the secret PIN or ‘passcode’ to confirm the payment and receives a subsequent message that the payment was confirmed.
Q. What about low-value payments? Can MoPay support cost-effective transaction processing of micro-payments?
A. Yes. MoPay is working with a number of banks on cost-effective solutions for the processing of micro-payments.
Q. We are thinking of offering a stored value/e-money account to our users for small purchases of games and other low value payments. Can MoPay help us with this?
A. Yes. MoPay can either act as the service to load and unload value from the account, or run the account itself as a managed service. MoPay is not an e-money issuer, but can operate the service on behalf of a number of banks.
Q. How does prepaid airtime top-up work?
A. There are two ways that MoPay can enable the top-up of prepaid mobile phones using SMS:
- A SMS low-balance alert is sent to the user to which the user simply responds inserting a secure PIN and the top-up amount or the user initiates a top-up request by constructing a text message.
- The top-up requests are sent to a short service number allocated by the mobile operator. The message is forwarded to the MoPay platform which authenticates the user by the mobile number from which the SMS was sent and the PIN used in the message. The platform then manages the payment authorization request, querying the appropriate bank for payment authorization. If the authorization is positive, MoPay instructs the operator to perform the top-up transaction, and the end-user is notified that the transaction was successful.
Q. What does a typical top-up message look like?
A. MoPay enables a variety of alphanumeric message formats. The message may be all numeric for ease of use and speed, such as ‘Top 1234 30’ where Top = top-up, 1234 = PIN and 30 = top-up amount. In the case of a low-balance alert sent directly to the user, the user may need to insert only the secret PIN and amount of top-up or simply the PIN if a default top-up amount is used.
Q. Can users top-up any prepaid mobile account?
A. Yes. However, for security purposes and to help prevent fraud, MoPay recommends that the end-user be asked to register ‘Friends & Family’ numbers that they wish to top-up. In this case, the system checks to see whether or not the mobile number designated for top-up corresponds to one of the numbers registered under a user’s account.
Q. What does a Friends & Family mobile airtime top-up message look like?
A. MoPay supports a number of message types for Friends & Family top-up. An example is ‘Top 1234 marie 30’ where Top = top-up, 1234 = PIN, marie = registered Friends & Family nickname, and 30 = the top-up amount. Alternatively, the actual mobile number of the phone to be topped up may be used in place of a nickname (‘Top 1234 0864836483 30’).
<<<General Questions / Service Features>>>
|
