MobileLime Announces A New NFC Platform for Cell-Phone Payments

Boston-based Vayusa Inc., whose MobileLime network serves some 80 merchants for payments initiated from consumers' cell phones, plans to begin supporting transactions based on the near-field-communication (NFC) standard in the second quarter. Announcing its new NFC platform today, the company says consumers with MobileLime accounts will be able to use their phones at any MobileLime merchant supporting MasterCard PayPass, Visa Contactless, or American Express ExpressPay transactions. The card companies' contactless programs have installed some contactless readers linked to point-of-sale devices at 27,000 merchant outlets so far, but this number is expected to grow fast. MobileLime, which supports both payment transactions and loyalty programs for merchants (Digital Transactions News, Jan. 31), says its new NFC platform will include an electronic coupon capability. It also expects to sign an unnamed high-end grocery store in Chicago next week, which will be its first merchant outside of the East Coast. With MobileLime's NFC-enabled “wallet,” users will be able to select MobileLime on their cell-phone screen, click on the card account they want to access, and wave their phones near a contactless reader to start a transaction. The user's card account data will flow via radio waves to the reader, replacing the conventional card swipe. “Moving to NFC is a natural evolution for MobileLime, from both a technology and customer perspective,” said Robert Wesley, president and chief executive, in a statement. NFC is a communications standard that works within a range of four centimeters and allows devices equipped with special chips to link to each other automatically for functions ranging from payment transactions to content downloads. Currently, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Visa USA, and several other companies are testing NFC technology at a sports stadium in Altanta, with a series of further such tests planned for the coming months (Digital Transactions News, Dec. 14, 2005). MobileLime says its platform is “carrier and handset agnostic,” allowing it to work on phones used by some 200 million U.S. wireless subscribers. On the existing MobileLime platform, customers designate PIN-protected payment accounts at enrollment. They access the accounts with a call to MobileLime on arrival at the store. At checkout, they indicate they are paying via MobileLime and give their seven-digit mobile-phone number to the cashier, who completes the transaction by pressing a “MobileLime” key on her register. Three-year-old MobileLime acts as a payment gateway, funneling transactions to any of a number of third-party processors.