Visa, mFormation Strategic Mobile Payments Alliance

mFormation provides solutions that enable mobile operators to manage wireless handsets and mobile services remotely. Applications and software updates are efficiently delivered over-the-air, eliminating the need for labor-intensive, in-person support. For the payments industry, this ability offers the potential for banks and operators to securely and remotely provision mobile devices with payment applications, and ultimately bring mobile payments programs to commercial scale.

“Mobile device management is critical to delivering the last mile of successful mobile services and can address the many challenges to commercial scale offerings,” said Mark Edwards, mFormation CEO. “As we begin to expand our business to new industries, leveraging our success in general mobile services, we look forward to our strategic collaboration with Visa to now enable innovative mobile payments.”

mFormation and Visa will work together, bringing expertise in their respective mobile and financial industries, to develop over-the-air delivery and management solutions for mobile payment applications. With growing interest for mobile payments, pilot trials of these new functionalities are expected as early as 2007.

“mFormation brings unique mobile industry insights and expertise, which will help deliver value to our member financial institutions,” said Patrick Gauthier, senior vice president, Innovation, Visa International. “Through our strategic alliance, Visa will also further mFormation’s understanding of the needs of the financial industry. With mFormation’s expertise in building secure, reliable mobile device management solutions and Visa’s experience delivering payment platforms for financial institutions, this collaboration will bring mobile payments one step closer to reality."