Citi Makes Equity Investment in ViVOtech

ViVOtech mobile infrastructure software has been constructed for collaboration across the entire payment ecosystem including banks, merchants, mobile operators and service providers. The resulting technology forms the foundation for a range of new customer payment, loyalty and promotion services, including personalized discounts and incentives, and faster and convenient transaction experience at the checkout.

“We look forward to working with Citi to continue driving the innovation and technologies that are moving mobile commerce from vision to reality,” said Michael Mullagh, CEO, ViVOtech. “NFC mobile technologies are connecting banks, merchants, and mobile carriers with their customers anywhere, anytime. Through our collaboration with Citi, we anticipate improving the customer experience – from how they shop, make payments, and enjoy personalized promotions using their mobile phones.”

Citi is committed to delivering leading-edge banking and payment solutions to its customers and helping to define the mobile and contactless future. ViVOtech understands how to deliver integrated and secure mobile capabilities that meet consumers’ needs. The combination of ViVOtech’s industry leading capabilities with Citi’s global reach is a big step in enabling the development of the mobile financial services ecosystem.

"As our customers’ everyday lives change, Citi seeks to meet their evolving needs by transforming consumer financial services through new ventures and innovations, particularly in the mobile payments and financial applications space,” said Jaidev Shergill, EVP, Growth Ventures and Innovation, Citi. “Our investment in ViVOtech demonstrates our commitment to leverage emerging technology and opportunities to offer our customers greater speed, simplicity, convenience, and security.”

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is a short-range wireless connectivity that enable mobile devices to interact with Contactless systems for a wide variety of transactions, including those at the point-of-sale, smart posters, ATMs and kiosks. A recent report from Juniper Research forecasts that by 2011, around 12% of the total mobile phones in circulation will offer support for contactless payment, specifically NFC – equating to nearly 470 million NFC-enabled handsets worldwide.