Voice Commerce, an innovative financial services group, is today announcing an agreement to provide payment and mobile money services to mobile operators through Alcatel-Lucent's (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) Mobile Wallet Service (MWS).
Mobile service providers can now deliver fully regulated end-to-end financial services, with the capabilities enabled by this agreement. Voice Commerce, which recently launched its Cashflows services, operates various financial services under licences covering the provision of payments, e-money services and is a membership of both Visa EU and MasterCard. This offering places mobile operators at the centre of mobile commerce because they can offer secure, regulated financial transactions to their customers.
This global offer is particularly well suited to mobile service providers in emerging markets where the mobile phone is used to deliver financial services, as it will enable them to meet the needs of those customers with a broader range of services such as mobile remittances and payments. The MWS can also be deployed in developed markets where consumers are interested in using the mobile phone for payments, coupons and loyalty programs.
The market for electronic mobile wallet services is growing fast and Gartner Group predicts it could reach $245 billion in value by 2014. Edgar, Dunn and Company predicts that mobile wallet users will reach 1.4 billion by 2015. Nick Holland, senior analyst, M-Commerce, Yankee Group commented, "We expect mobile payments to be an area of significant growth over the next few years as consumers are won over by the convenience, speed and security of paying by phone."
"Together with Alcatel-Lucent and mobile operators, we see the opportunities for consumers to manage their every day financial needs with their mobile phone," said Nick Ogden, CEO of Voice Commerce. "At Voice Commerce we have focussed on developing new, innovative and regulated services, and this, coupled with the recent launch of our Cashflows services, we believe will support mobile operators in delivering new services to their customers. Voice Commerce with Alcatel-Lucent's MWS, enables mobile operations to accelerate their "go to market" offerfer of electronic wallet services, as all the financial services requirements and technical capabilities are delivered as an end-to-end service."
"Our goal is to provide a complete mobile money eco-system for the mobile operator," said Anthony Belpaire, General Manager Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet Service. "For fast adoption of services across existing point-of-sale terminals, our customers need compliance with e-money licensing schemes and interoperability with global payment networks. Voice Commerce provides a unique market accelerator to make MWS a complete solution for mobile operators "