Over on CGAP's Technology Blog, Olga Morawczynski, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, writes about Kenya's M-Pesa and what most of us don't know about M-Pesa. She credits much of its success not to the usual suspects we've heard about but rather to Sagentia, a technology consultancy firm based in Cambridge. As often happens with innovations, it was the small dedicated team working with the two big players that provided the focus to get things done!

comScore has released an inaugural study of the mobile financial services industry with a new report titled Mobile Financial Services: The Market Today & Opportunities for Tomorrow. The report provides a look at the current state of the industry and mobile financial users, and highlights areas for potential growth in this rapidly evolving market. READ MORE

Mobile payments provider Bling Nation has announced receiving $8 million in Series A funding with $6.3 million coming from lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. The remaining $1.7 million was raised primarily from Meck, Ltd., which invested an initial $5.3 million in Bling Nation, and CampVentures. READ MORE

Visa has announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Monitise plc "to facilitate the delivery of Visa mobile payments and related services to consumers around the world. Concurrent with the strategic alliance, Visa has agreed to make a minority equity investment in Monitise, subject to Monitise shareholder approval."

The Wall St. Journal is reporting that "Monitise said Visa has agreed to take a 14.4% stake" for $13 million. READ MORE

Visa has announced the start of a mobile payment program in collaboration with VisaNet Perú and Telefónica called Pago Móvil con Visa (Visa Mobile Pay). The new service "allows Visa cardholders in Peru to pay for products and services by simply initiating a payment over the wireless network. The service is available to Visa accountholders with credit or debit cards issued by Banco de Crédito, Interbank, BBVA Continental and Scotiabank in Peru." READ MORE

Visa and NeuStar have announced a strategic alliance they say is "designed to accelerate the adoption of mobile financial services globally." According to the companies, "the alliance will combine the reliability, scale and security of Visa’s global payment network with NeuStar’s carrier grade infrastructure which provides critical interconnection services to global network operators and their partners enabling seamless delivery of mobile services to consumers worldwide." READ MORE

In an article titled "Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone", Claire Cain Miller and Matt Richtel write for the New York Times about Obopay (and MasterCard's MoneySend launched last week with Obopay), Boku, Zong and PayPal.

[Editor's note: one facet of a couple of these services that the article's authors fail to note is the cost of payment acceptance - and how that cost varies from service to service. In some segments - such as virtual goods where merchants have a close to zero cost of goods sold - merchants can afford to pay a lot to gain widespread acceptance on cell phones. Other merchants, with real costs of goods sold, would find the costs of these approaches out of the question. There's a similar story when it comes to person-to-person money transfer. For domestic transfers in the US, there's a certain cost sensitivity. For international remittances involving currency conversion, on the other hand, there's a much greater opportunity to price for value. Need help understanding all of this? Drop us a note here!]

Western Union has announced the launch of a Digital Vendor Program intended to extend the reach and accessibility of Western Union Money Transfer services to mobile finance initiatives in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

"Establishing a strong mobile vendor program is a critical step in the delivery of our 'Western Union Anywhere' service proposition," said Matt Dill, SVP and Head of Western Union Digital Ventures. "By collaborating on a global level with proven mobile platform providers, we believe we can simplify deployments for our mobile partners and introduce a more consistent Western Union experience for consumers." READ MORE

In a post titled "Beaucoup Bucks" over on our sister PaymentsViews.com website, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at Boku, the new online payments service that was announced yesterday. Carol begins: "Boku is drop-dead easy for the consumer. The online demo is stunning in its simplicity. Never, ever, underestimate the importance of ease of use for a consumer. Especially for spontaneous purchases. In my opinion, this is right up there with 1-Click."

AcCells, a developer of contactless technology for the mobile phone industry and mChek, a provider of mobile payments in India and Sri Lanka, have announced what they're calling "a patent-pending breakthrough for Contactless Payments." According to the two companies, by "combining service initiation by AcCells mID and transaction authorization with the mChek SIM Toolkit, the solution presents a new level of user experience, transaction cost and efficiency. Most importantly the solution works with ALL existing mobile phones, does not require ANY change to infrastructure and platforms of Mobile Network Operators and/or Banking Infrastructure, and works in MNO-led or Bank-led environments." READ MORE

BOKU has announced the launch of a new mobile payments service, along with the acquisition of both Paymo and Mobillcash businesses -- two leading providers in the global mobile payments industry.

According to BOKU, its mobile payments service "enables global consumers to make online purchases of digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones. The company is creating a new standard for mobile transactions by bringing bank-grade mobile payments to the Web, and enables merchants and publishers to provide fast and reliable mobile payments to over 1.6 billion consumers globally. In a related announcement today, the company raised $13 million in venture funding led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures, and unveiled its management team." READ MORE

Fiserv has announced that it is now providing its Mobile Money service to Bangkok Bank, one of the only banks in Thailand using an international mobile banking solution. Customers can now access Bangkok Bank's internet banking platform, Bualuang iBanking, on their mobile phone, enabling them to view account information, pay bills, transfer funds and top up their mobile phone account. The application is available in both English and Thai languages. Powered by technology from Atlanta-based M-Com, Inc. Mobile Money from Fiserv was launched in September 2008. READ MORE

Here's the press release on the launch of a new mobile money transfer and payment service in Canada called Zoompass.

"Canada’s three leading wireless operators, today launched Zoompass, a breakthrough mobile money transfer and payment service. Zoompass gives Canadians a fast and convenient way to send and receive money securely using their mobile phone. The service is enabled through the Zoompass application on the mobile phone which combines an easy-to-use interface with an integrated contact manager that redefines how users send and receive money. Zoompass is a better way to pay than cash, cheque, or wire transfer." READ MORE

CBC News in Canada is reporting that Canada's three main wireless carriers are expected to launch Zoompass on Monday - a new mobile payments service that will be managed by Enstream, a joint venture the three carriers established in 2005. Using software downloaded to the mobile handsets, users will be able to send, receive and request money to/from other mobile phones. According to the company's web site, an accompanying MasterCard PayPass card allows you to make payments from your Zoompass account at POS locations. The Zoompass project involves only the wireless carriers - although partnering with financial institutions might happen in the future. Zoompass already is tweeting about itself on Twitter.

In a story titled "Danal eyes Global Market" in the Korea Herald, Danal Co., a leading provider of mobile payment services in Korea, says it will "launch BilltoMobile in the United States in about three months, enabling Americans to charge online purchases to their mobile phone bills."

Intuit has announced that Intuit GoPayment, a new way for business owners to process credit cards on their mobile phones, is the first small business application available for the new Palm Pre phone. According to the company, "GoPayment helps improve cash flow by giving small businesses an affordable and hassle-free way to process credit card payments outside the office as soon as the job is done." READ MORE

One of the new TV ads for Apple's iPhone 3GS features the Credit Card Terminal application - available in the iTunes App Store - showing how a card accepting merchant can use the application to process credit card transactions right from her iPhone.

Yesterday, Apple unveiled the new iPhone 3GS and also reduced the price of the current model iPhone 3G to $99.

In a press release, Gartner says that "the mobile payment industry will experience steady growth, as the number of mobile payment users worldwide will total 73.4 million in 2009, up 70.4 percent from 2008 when there were 43.1 million users. Gartner predicts that the number of mobile payment users will reach more than 190 million in 2012, representing more than 3 percent of total mobile users worldwide and attaining a level at which it will be considered "mainstream." READ MORE

Merchants with existing plastic gift card programs can now take advantage of Mocapay's recently launched mobile gift card iPhone application, available on iTunes. READ MORE

Earlier this year, Intuit "soft launched" its new GoPayment mobile card acceptance solution for merchants. Yesterday, Intuit officially announced the new service - "GoPayment helps small businesses improve sales and cash flow by using their mobile phones to accept credit card payments. GoPayment is affordable and hassle-free. All that’s needed is a mobile phone with access to the mobile Web, or the easy-to-download GoPayment application, and an Intuit GoPayment merchant account." READ MORE

One of my favorite weekly things to do is to listen to the excellent weekly podcasts that Dave Birch from Consult Hyperion produces. This week's edition features an interview with Eckhard Ortwein, one of the original founders of payBox who can rightly claim he's spent ten years working on mobile payments.

Dave's interview of Eckhard is great - as they walk through the evolution of payBox over the ten years - its failures and successes - leading to its acquisition by Sybase 365 late last year.

If you're at all interested in the evolution of mobile payments, be sure to give this 25 minute podcast a listen! Here's a link to the podcast in the iTunes Music Store.

Wright Express has announced that its multi-city NFC mobile payment pilot with Sheetz and ViVOtech has been successfully completed. According to the company, "during the trial, drivers used their Sheetz Fleet Business Advantage card loaded into their specially enabled Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phones to make fuel and convenience store purchases at hundreds of Sheetz locations by just waving their NFC mobile phones at contactless-enabled readers. Wright Express was able to authorize and process the mobile transactions as easily as those done by drivers using plastic cards." READ MORE

MasterCard has announced that its "fully-integrated, on-demand person-to-person (P2P) mobile payment platform for issuers in the United States is set to go live later this month. With this new platform, MasterCard participating bank customers will be able to offer Mobile MasterCard MoneySend(TM) P2P payments to their customers." READ MORE

Obopay has announced the Obopay Family Account that "lets parents send money to their children -- or any family member -- instantly from any mobile phone. With Obopay's Family Account, parents get an Obopay Family Prepaid MasterCard issued by The Bancorp Bank for any child at least 13 years old, which can be used in-person, online or by phone with any merchant that accepts MasterCard debit cards." READ MORE

Sybase 365 has announced that it will team with Swisscontact, the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation, to provide development of Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) and Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) services in emerging markets. READ MORE

Western Union, Consumer Portfolio Services, and VeriSign have announced a pilot project to enable CPS customers to trigger their monthly car payment directly from their mobile phone. According to the companies, "unlike mobile payment services that direct the consumer to a website or interactive voice response system (IVR), the new service allows consumers to quickly and easily initiate their payment using their phone's text messaging service based on debit or credit card information entered online." READ MORE

Edgar, Dunn & Co. recently developed a whitepaper in cooperation with Sybase 365 entitled ‘Realizing the Full Potential of Mobile Commerce’. According to EDC, "stakeholders in the mobile commerce ecosystem will need to collaborate in order to bring flexibility to the consumer – the cornerstone needed for the success of mobile commerce. This will ultimately require orchestration to bring the stakeholders together and also manage the complexity of the mobile commerce ecosystem." You can also download the paper from the Sybase web site by registering.

Nokia has announced its third fully integrated Near Field Communication (NFC) device, the Nokia 6216 classic, Nokia's first SIM-based NFC device. According to Nokia, "with NFC consumers will benefit from greater ease of use, more convenient sharing of content - such as images, weblinks, audio files or contact data - as well as secure payment and ticketing transactions, all with just one tap of the device." READ MORE

GlobalPlatform has published a new white paper titled "The GlobalPlatform Proposition for NFC Mobile: Secure Element Management & Messaging" that is intended to outline its technical contribution and commitment to the near field communication (NFC) mobile market. The paper details how GlobalPlatform Specifications are able to support all roles in the NFC ecosystem and outlines the roles and responsibilities of each player in the maintenance of an end-to-end security chain to ensure the secure management of over-the air applications between a service provider’s back office and the secure element on a chip.

MasterCard Canada, in partnership with Citi Cards Canada and Bell Mobility, has completed the first near-field communications (NFC) trial of Mobile PayPass in Canada. The four month long closed trial allowed participants to use Bell Mobility's wireless network to make purchases using their mobile device at MasterCard PayPass acceptance locations across Canada. READ MORE