Frequently Asked Questions
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GENERAL QUESTIONS
Q. Who is MoPay?
A. MoPay provides a centralized m-payment processing platform to which banks, mobile operators and merchants – any seller or supplier of goods and services - can connect to enable mobile payment services for their customers.
(read more)
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.
(read more)
SERVICE FEATURES
Q. What technology is used for interacting with the user?
A. MoPay promotes the use of simple SMS-based m-payment services as a way to encourage user adoption of mobile payments. The popularity and mass-market acceptance of SMS make it a familiar channel to users and an easy way to enable mobile payments. MoPay can, however, also support other consumer ‘touch points’ for interfacing with users (ATM, Web, IVR) through the same hosted platform.
MoPay recommends the use of SMS as a channel to make m-payments simple and easy to use for consumers, which will ultimately drive user adoption of new payment services.
(read more)
TRANSACTION HANDLING
Q. What information does MoPay need to manage m-payments?
A. MoPay requires three key pieces of information to manage mobile payments: the user’s mobile number, the secret PIN (whether MoPay-generated or provisioned onto the system) and for some applications, the user’s payment details (bank account or credit/debit card number). All three are securely stored in the system and are accessed only when payment requests are processed.
(read more)
CONNECTING TO MOPAY
Q. How do we physically connect to the MoPay service centre?
A. Your systems connect to MoPay over a private and secure network, such as VPN. This can be set-up either through a provider with a global network and infrastructure (AT&T, for example) or can be arranged through your local Service Provider.
(read more)
SECURITY
Q. What security measures does MoPay incorporate to ensure that customers’ payment details are secure?
A. There are a number of measures that have been put into place to ensure the integrity and safety of consumers’ payment details. At the application level, whatever the payment instrument used (bank account, credit/debit card account), payment details are securely encrypted to financial services standards (3DES, for example). From a physical and logical security perspective, the hosting environment provided by IBM features state-of-the-art security procedures and infrastructure as well as IBM-assured reliability.
(read more)
COMMERCIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Q. Many m-payment projects have failed because there was essentially no business case driving them. What makes the types of applications MoPay is offering so different?
A. The applications MoPay is designing with our customers are based on real business cases and enable cost-effective processing of mobile payments.
Firstly, the shared infrastructure of a managed service eliminates the need for capital investment to operate a payment service and requires minimum human resources to manage.
Secondly, the scope of the financial advantages for participants varies from application to application. For prepaid mobile top-up, the cost savings of replacing expensive voucher-based schemes with more cost-effective and convenient methods such as SMS-based top-up is dramatic. For financial services organizations, m-payments represent a new payment channel and a way to ensure that more transactions are processed by banks leading to additional revenues and profits. For some applications involving the transfer of funds from one account to another via SMS, the speed and efficiency of electronic money transfer can shorten cash collection times, thereby improving cash flow (eliminating cheques/cash payments).
Operators can use MoPay-enabled services to enable low-value payments for goods and services which they sell directly to mobile users. They can also make better use of their SMS channels by bundling SMS packages for banks, merchants and other participants who are offering m-payment services to their customers.
(read more)
MOBILE OPERATORS
Q. How can the MoPay MoPay benefit mobile operators?
A. MoPay’s MoPay is an easy, cost-effective way to enable m-payment applications, enabling mobile operators to offer new types of services to end-users. Not only can applications be lucrative financially (SMS-based prepaid mobile top-up, bundling and selling SMS packages to participating merchants and financial service organizations) but also in terms of the marketing potential they offer for attracting new clients. Operators seeking to offer a stored value account for processing low-value payments can also rely on MoPay to manage these services.
(read more)
FINANCIAL SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS (BANKS, CARD ASSOCIATIONS)
Q. Many of the applications MoPay proposes use SMS. Does this mean that the bank needs to have an SMS-C or an in-house SMS Gateway?
A. No. There is no need for the bank to invest in an SMS-C or to handle SMS messages. The MoPay platform manages all messages via a built in Gateway which can interface with multiple operator SMS-Cs.
(read more)
END-USERS
Q. Do users need special handsets to use MoPay-enabled mobile payment applications?
A. No. Even the most basic of handsets supports MoPay applications. If your users’ phones can send text messages, then they can use MoPay’s SMS-based m-payment applications.
(read more)
|
