Belgium-based Integri and India's Tata Infotech have been selected to provide testing services for the Simpay mobile payments scheme, founded by Orange, Telefónica Móviles, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
Integri will develop a suite of simulators of Simpay's systems to enable stand-alone testing by mobile operators. The Simpay Scheme Simulator will be based on Integri's INQ Test Tool product.
Tata Infotech will provide testing of central processing systems and the readiness of scheme members for the launch of the payments service. Simpay says Infotech was chosen for its ability to cost effectively conduct extensive and intensive testing using a combination of onshore and offshore resources.
Simpay announced in April that Encorus Technologies had won a multi-year contract to provide transaction processing for the mobile payments scheme.
Tim Jones, CEO, Simpay, says the new annoucement represents another major milestone towards Simpay's commercial launch in Europe in 2005: "We are confident that we and our providers will meet these timescales; Encorus will construct and operate our processing infrastructure, Tata Infotech will provide independent testing support and Integri will build our simulators."
The founding members of Simpay represent more than 280 million mobile phone subscribers worldwide and the group predicts it will enable over EUR1bn of extra transactions for the mobile phone industry by 2007.