Source: Sprint
Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced the availability of Pinsight Touch, a nationwide, open platform for securely storing and accessing credentials on a mobile device, opening up new possibilities for the transit, access and payment verticals.
Pinsight Touch offers a direct path for credential issuers to enable their own branded applications with Near Field Communication (NFC) and to share secured access to those credentials with other trusted applications, creating opportunities for increased distribution and wallet share.
Sprint has joined forces with Sequent, leveraging their technology platform to make it easy for application developers to add NFC functionality into the branded mobile applications consumers already use. To further support growing the value of issuer and merchant mobile applications, Sprint has tied-in Pinsight Media+, the mobile media company powered by Sprint. Pinsight Media+ incorporates a suite of media tools into the Pinsight Touch program which can assist issuers and merchants in driving the discoverability of their mobile applications and maximizing customer acquisition.
"Pinsight Touch provides businesses with the flexibility to offer innovative technologies without having to compromise their brand and their relationships with customers," said Evan Conway, vice president, monetization and strategy - Pinsight Media+. "Transit, access and payment companies will now have a better way to connect with customers via their own mobile apps and services."
By incorporating Pinsight Touch, issuers have greater control over customer adoption from within their existing applications already being used by millions of consumers. Unlike the current models for NFC services, where extra hardware, additional applications and sensitive customer authentication questionnaires are often needed to onboard a customer, Pinsight Touch is able to significantly streamline the onboarding process.
Because many Sprint phones are already "Touch-enabled," millions of customers will be able to turn on NFC credential usage by simply saying "yes" to an opt-in question from their favorite issuer application. Trusted issuer applications are able to leverage their existing authentication and offer an easy upgrade path for consumers to adopt NFC. Sprint currently offers many NFC-enabled devices, with more expected later this year and in 2014.