41st Parameter says it is "forecasting increased mobile channel cybercrime and decreased effectiveness of traditional anti-fraud tactics, attributed to the rapid adoption of new mobile handsets and multiple operating systems. According to a November 2009 consumer study of U.S. mobile phone users, 18.9 percent of mobile consumers now use a smartphone, and an additional 49.2 percent plan to purchase an advanced mobile device within the next two years. Last week, Gartner reported smartphone sales in 3Q09 grew 12.8% year over year, reaching 41.1 million units." READ MORE

GoPayforit has announced that it has launched its new mobile, small payments service to enable bloggers and content owners to more easily sell content online. The company says that "by using GoPayforit, lower priced content can now be purchased by consumers in an easier, more manageable and less time-consuming way. GoPayforit allows bloggers and content owners to set up a payment service for their site by inserting one simple line of code. Once established, this enables consumers to debit money directly from their mobile phone bill (PAYG or contract) in order to make payments. UK mobile operators provide support for GoPayforit as a secure transaction platform as it is based on the tried and tested Payforit platform." READ MORE

Cryptomathic has announced that it has been selected by MasterCard Worldwide to manage the data preparation requirements for the deployment of the MasterCard Mobile Over The Air Provisioning Service that enables MasterCard PayPass applications to be provisioned on to mobile phones. READ MORE

MasterCard has announced the launch of a solution that harnesses the mobile phone as a form factor for its Chip Authentication Program. According to MasterCard," the initiative focuses on enabling consumers to authenticate their banking and online transactions through their own mobile phone with solutions from three leading industry vendors." READ MORE

MasterCard has announced the MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway, a mobile payments processing platform that the company says "enables financial institutions and mobile network operators to deliver end-to-end mobile payments solutions through the MasterCard Worldwide Network." READ MORE

Alcatel-Lucent has announced a collaboration between its venture, touchatag and Clear2Pay to create a mobile payment framework for mobile operators. According to the companies, "this framework will allow users to purchase products, buy tickets or transfer money using their mobile phone. For example, by placing a Near Field Communications (NFC) enabled mobile phone over scanners at a point-of-sale terminal, a user can use his phone as a wallet." READ MORE

In an article titled "At Checkout, More Ways to Avoid Cash or Plastic", Claire Cain Miller writes for the New York Times about how "consumers could, sooner than they think, carry virtual wallets, with their credit card and bank information stored on remote computers that are accessible everywhere and anytime."

ViVOtech has announced that its NFC mobile payment wallet, Over-the-Air (OTA) provisioning, smart posters, coupon delivery and redemption technologies have been successfully deployed in Citi Tap and Pay, a pilot service that brings to India next-generation contactless credit card payments based on this emerging technology. Launched in July in the city of Bengaluru in India, Citi Tap and Pay is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive NFC mobile payment pilots.a READ MORE

Fiserv has announced plans for a new personal payments service that it says "will enable individuals to quickly and easily send or receive money person-to-person using their existing online banking relationship. The service will be made available to the more than 3,100 financial institutions in the Fiserv online payment network, linking users with their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues." READ MORE

CashEdge and Firethorn have announced a strategic relationship to bring to market an integrated mobile person-to-person (P2P) payments solution integrating CashEdge's POPmoney P2P payments service with Firethorn's Mobile Wallet solution. According to the companies, "the integrated mobile P2P solution will enable financial institutions to offer their customers the ability to send electronic payments using CashEdge's POPmoney from within their Firethorn mobile banking application, by simply using the email address or mobile phone number of the recipient. This comprehensive mobile P2P banking solution will give consumers greater control over their finances, enabling them to pay other people whenever and wherever they want." READ MORE

Obopay has announced its entrance into the online games market with the immediate availability of a mobile payment solution. With Obopay's mobile payment service, consumers can "mobilize" their credit or debit card by linking it to their mobile phone number, making it convenient to quickly purchase goods online. READ MORE

Zenius Solutions has announced the integration of its software to an NFC add-on for GSM phones - offering the ability to enable interactive NFC capability on current mobile phones. NFC payment capability is achieved by adding a BLADOX Waver product running ZeniusMobilePay software to supported GSM phones, enabling secure Mastercard PayPass, Visa payWave, American Express ExpressPay and Discover Network Zip EMV and non-EMV Contactless transactions. READ MORE

The NFC Forum has made available a presentation given at the CTIA conference earlier this month titled "Making Money with NFC" that was presented by Debbie Arnold (NFC Forum), Dave Wentker (Visa, Inc.), Matt Ronning (SONY), David de Kozan (Cubic), and Mohammad Khan (ViVOtech). If you're interested in a good background on the current state of NFC-based mobile payments and other applications, this presentation provides a great overview.

INSIDE Contactless has announced an initiative that it says "creates a new class of mobile payment solutions that banks, brands, transit agencies and others can deploy quickly, easily and in a highly targeted way starting in 2010. INSIDE has already engaged with several innovative technology companies that share its vision to develop a variety of mobile payment solutions based on INSIDE's proven, certified MicroPass(r) platform that will enable existing mobile phones to support mobile payments, as well as transit, ID and access control applications. A number of these solutions expected to reach the market as early as this fall." READ MORE

In an article on PaymentsViews.com titled "Blinging it Home? A Look at Bling Nation", Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at Bling Nation, a provider of a community payments service based on contactless technology and relationships with community financial institutions.

Over the last several weeks, Carol has been conducting a series of very interesting interviews with companies in the mobile payments space. Be sure to check them out!

TSYS Acquiring Solutions has announced the introduction of MobilePASS - a payment application that gives merchants the ability to accept and process card payments any time, anywhere.

According to TSYS, "MobilePASS enables merchants to accept and process card payments while on-the-go. A convenient alternative to traditional and expensive payment applications such as wireless terminals, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and old- fashioned knuckle busters, MobilePASS is designed for the 21st century merchant." READ MORE

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area on the evening of Tuesday, October 20th, you may want to attend the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab discussion on the topic of "Mobile Wallet: Can your phone replace your wallet?" being held at Stanford University.

Panelists for the discussion, to be moderated by Scott Ellison - Vice President/Mobile and Wireless, IDC, include:

• Wenceslao Casares - Founder, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Director, BlingNation
• Eric Duprat - General Manager Mobile, Paypal
• Dev Khare - Vice President, Venrock
• Margaret Mackenzie - SVP Operations and Chief Financial Officer, Boku
• Carol Realini - CEO, Obopay

More details here.

Amazon Payments LLC, an Amazon.com company, has announced the availability of the Amazon Mobile Payments Service (Amazon MPS) - saying it provides "developers, merchants and distributors of mobile applications an easy way to process payments from mobile devices and extend Amazon’s 1-Click checkout experience to their customers. Amazon MPS enables tens of millions of Amazon customers to use the existing payment and shipping information in their Amazon.com accounts to make purchases from their mobile devices. To get started using the Amazon Mobile Payments Service, visit http://amazonpayments.com/mps." READ MORE

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at mFoundry with her interview of CEO Drew Sievers.

Carol writes:

In the short-term, the killer app for mFoundry will be frequent-use, closed-loop stored value cards – delivered not by NFC but by the use of 2D bar codes. The Starbucks test announced last week is the first of what Sievers claims will be multiple announcements coming from mFoundry in the near future. 

The cover story in the new issue of the Economist is titled "The power of mobile money" - "By far the most successful example of mobile money is M-PESA, launched in 2007 by Safaricom of Kenya. It now has nearly 7m users—not bad for a country of 38m people, 18.3m of whom have mobile phones."

The article concludes: "Mobile money presents a shining opportunity to start a second wave of mobile-led development across the poor world. Operators, banks and regulators should seize it."

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at mPayy and shares an interview she did with Conrad Sheehan, CEO of mPayy.

Tyfone has announced the it was awarded a second patent - US 7,581,678, is entitled “Electronic Transaction Card - for its innovations in smart card-based electronic wallet technology.

According to Tyfone, "using time-varying magnetic fields, Tyfone’s patented technology enables the use of a memory card as an electronic wallet and/or the ability to use that memory card for the secure transmission of financial information." READ MORE

Take a look at the Inside Facebook blog and the ads from its sponsors - including Zong, SuperRewards, Allpass, PaymentPin and OfferPal.

Also, notice the survey results discussed in this article - none of the major consumer credit card companies or issuers made the top 10!

Have you signed up to use virtual currency or pay for digital goods using your mobile phone?

Over on our sister blog PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Erin McCune reports on a recent panel discussion on mobile payments in developing markets organized by Menekse Gencer of mPayConnect.

According to Erin, "The evening started with a primer on mobile financial services..." Click here to read on.

On the GSMA's Mobile Money for the Unbanked blog, Paul Leishman interviews Zahir Khoja, Executive Director - Mobile Money (M-PAISA) about the launch of mobile money in Afghanistan.

In an article titled "Getting the Garden Ready: First Data and Mobile Payments at the Point of Sale" over on our sister Payments Views blog, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at mobile payments for local point-of-sale transactions and, in particular, First Data's efforts in that regard.

In preparing the article, Carol interviewed Barry McCarthy, President, Mobile Commerce Solutions for First Data, who discussed the four key pieces required for mobile payments at POS: the upgrade of the POS terminal base, availability of NFC-enabled phones, card issuer participation, and consumer education.

A new report from Juniper Research "forecasts that the application of NFC as a mobile retail marketing tool via coupons and smart posters will support the growth of NFC mobile payment transaction values from $8bn in 2009 to $30bn within three years." READ MORE

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at mobile payments provider Payfone.

"Instead of using SMSs and short codes like ringtone merchants and existing bill-to-carrier payment providers, Payfone operates within the carrier signaling network, a global network that allows carriers to communicate and exchange information between each other." Read the full article here.

BOKU has announced new merchants and publishers who have selected BOKU for its convenient, bank-grade payment solution - spanning the social and casual gaming, social networking and application spaces. According to the company, its service allows over 1.8 billion potential consumers to shop online and purchase virtual goods and digital content easily and securely using their mobile phone. READ MORE

The NFC Forum and the Mobey Forum have announced a Memorandum of Understanding to "work together to further ongoing efforts to create open standards that enable the delivery of services that provide secure and interoperable mobile financial transactions." READ MORE