Simpay, the mobile payment scheme founded by Orange, Telefónica Móviles, T-Mobile and Vodafone, has set an end-of-year deadline for roll-out of its first product, which will focus on low value payments under ten euros.
Simpay forecasts that, thanks to the interoperability of its platform, it will enable over EUR1billion of extra transactions for the mobile phone industry by 2007. The product will have its technical launch by the end of 2004 and be commercially available in early 2005.
Also announced today is the news that Elisa (previously Radiolinja), Mobilkom, Optimus, SFR and TeliaSonera have joined 3, debitel, KPN Mobile group, O2 and TMN in expressing an interest in becoming members of Simpay.
Tim Jones, CEO, Simpay (pictured) comments: "We have finished the design stage and have signed off on the technical specification. We are now into the next chapter of the Simpay story - of building the platform and product."
He says research conducted by Simpay has found the geatest demand for low-value mobile payments for digital content, such as ring-tones, icons and java games.
"This lower value payment space is a huge opportunity for revenue generation and is yet largely untapped," says Jones.
Consumers will be billed and pay for these via their mobile operator account. In the future Simpay expects to offer a payment mechanism for higher value items like flowers and tickets as well as physical goods and services like car parking and vending machines.