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

Transparent Financial Services (TransFS) has announced the launch of its TransFS Card Terminal, "an iPhone app that provides businesses with credit card acceptance capabilities in virtually any location. TransFS Card Terminal™ is the first iPhone app of its kind to be free of cost and provide complete freedom of choice in credit card processor selection." TransFS has also made the source code of the application available as open source software. READ MORE

Annually at the Web 2.0 Summit for the last several years, Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker has given a presentation on her views about the market as well as the most interesting trends in technogy, Internet, etc. This year's presentation was given yesterday in San Francisco and is available online. If you're at all interested in what's happening with mobile, Meeker's slides are a must read!

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.

Earlier this week, Nokia announced its Nokia Money initiative. Here are a couple of interesting blog posts discussing its prospects:

• Nokia Money – An Uphill Battle by Mark Beccue, ABI Research.
• Finnish Line by Dave Birch, Consult Hyperion.

What do you think? Add your comments below!

Nokia has introduced Nokia Money - a new mobile service operated in conjunction with Obopay - calling it "a new mobile financial service offering consumers with mobile device access to basic financial services. For many consumers, this will be the first time they have had any access to such financial services."

According to the company, "Nokia Money has been designed to be as simple and convenient as making a voice call or sending an SMS. It will enable consumers to send money to another person just by using the person's mobile phone number, as well as to pay merchants for goods and services, pay their utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up). The services can be accessed 24 hours a day from anywhere, meaning savings in travel costs and time. Nokia is building a wide network of Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts." READ MORE

Dave Birch has posted his latest Digital Money Forum podcast - this week interviewing Dion Lisle, Senior Vice President of Citibank’s Growth Ventures team. In this podcast, he talks about Citi's focus on the mobile future.

MasterCard has announced the availability of the MasterCard Priceless Picks iPhone application which it says "gives consumers a location-based utility to find and share their favorite picks with friends and family. Leveraging the iPhone’s GPS technology, users can instantly find shopping deals, entertainment options, dining venues and special experiences just steps away from where they are or where they’re traveling to, for business or for pleasure. Priceless Picks is available for free download at the iPhone App Store." READ MORE

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

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

Discover Financial Services has announced the launch of Mobile Reminders -"designed to help cardmembers stay on top of their accounts and help manage debt better. This new service allows cardmembers to have more control over their finances and easier access to their Discover® Card accounts. Discover.com registered users can log in and select to receive any of eight Account Activity reminders via text (SMS) message or email. The Mobile Reminders provide cardmembers with important account information that is sent directly to their mobile device." READ MORE

Wesabe has introduced a free application "to help consumers track and manage their money on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Wesabe's iPhone app lets members: view all of their bank and credit card accounts in one place; track their cash spending on the go; edit, categorize and tag their purchases; and set up and monitor spending targets via their phone. When consumers input a purchase, the app saves time on typing by offering up the names of the closest merchants, using the phone's GPS and Yahoo! Local APIs." READ MORE

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

Clickatell has introduced the new Clickatell SMS Receipts service that enables anytime, anywhere alerts between financial service providers and their customers to help fight fraud. READ MORE

GlobalPlatform, the international specification body for smart card infrastructure, has announced that PayPal has become its latest member. According to the organization, "PayPal, the leading global online payments service, will bring its expertise to GlobalPlatform and contribute to the ongoing development of standards to ensure interoperability across the payments industry." READ MORE

Mocapay has announced that ink! Coffee, a specialty coffee retailer with multiple stores throughout the greater Denver metro area and Aspen, has selected Mocapay to implement and operate its mobile gift program. ink! Coffee currently offers plastic gift cards at all of its locations and expects to "go live" with Mocapay's mobile gift in the second quarter of this year. READ MORE

Despite regulatory challenges and the financial crisis, policymakers are embracing mobile banking as a means of providing financial access to the unbanked poor. More than a billion people worldwide lack bank accounts, but do have mobile phones, providing a dramatic opportunity to achieve greater financial inclusion, according to officials meeting near London today. READ MORE

The CTIA has published “Best Practices and Guidelines for Mobile Financial Services (MFS)” - which were unanimously approved by America’s leading wireless carrier companies. According to the CTIA, "this voluntary initiative was developed to provide consumers with a high level of safety and security for mobile banking, commerce and payments products and services." READ MORE

Fiserv has announced the results of recent market research that quantified the interest among banks and credit unions for mobile deposit capture and gauged their views on potential customer acceptance. Mobile deposit capture is an extension of remote deposit capture (RDC) that enables checks to be deposited anywhere via a mobile phone equipped with a camera to create and send an image of the check. READ MORE

Gemalto and INSIDE Contactless have announced availability of a Near-Field Communications (NFC) solution fully complying with the latest ETSI standards. According to the companies,

"the solution also meets the new GSM Association "Pay-Buy-Mobile" mobile handset requirements based on the Single Wire Protocol (SWP). The new Inside MicroRead® NFC chip, combined with the Gemalto latest UpTeq 300 m-NFC SIM card embarking a Common Criteria EAL4+ security certified chip, gives handset makers and mobile operators the first fully compliant, interoperable, full-speed SWP solution - tested at 1.6 Mbps - to support proximity payments, transport and ticketing."

CGAP, the global microfinance center, is releasing new research and data to encourage telecom operators, financial institutions and governments to see the business potential in expanding access to financial services for poor people in developing markets. According to CGAP, "the current economic climate makes the need for widespread availability of safe alternatives to cash even more pressing." READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless has announced that it is working with Qualcomm to accelerate the growth of the Near Field Communication (NFC) handset market by jumpstarting the product development cycle, speeding time to market and significantly reducing development costs. As part of the collaboration, the two companies will develop two 3G handset reference designs-one each for UMTS and CDMA2000 networks-that combine Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets with INSIDE's MicroRead(r) multi-standard NFC chip. READ MORE

Qualcomm has announced that it has added support for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to certain chipsets in its product portfolio. "Qualcomm is helping accelerate the commercial availability of mobile handsets featuring the short-range technology and is engaged with leading NFC solutions providers to develop reference designs based on the Company's Mobile Station Modem chipsets. NFC technology is well suited for payment, mass transit, ticketing and other similar applications requiring a quick and secure contactless exchange of data between devices that are in close proximity to each other." READ MORE

[Editor's note: This may not have any immediate banking/financial services application - but it's yet another example of what's happening with mobile technology becoming the "sensor-based platform" of the future!]

This morning Google introduced Google Latitude, a new service that uses mobile phone positioning data to let you see where your friends are in real-time on Google Maps. More information - including a brief introductory video - is available here.

In an article titled "NFC is more than just payments", Andy Williams writes for NFC News about the other applications of near-field communications - beyond payments. "What makes NFC so attractive is the wide range of applications it can support, whether it’s opening a door, logging into your computer, signing on to the Internet, or using your phone like a PDA stylus, touching points on a map or other display to gather further information or directions."

Moversa, a joint venture between NXP and Sony Corporation, has announced it will unveil its latest security chip – the Universal Secure Access Module (U-SAM) – at this year’s Mobile World Congress (16-19 February in Barcelona, Spain). According to the company, "the chip manages contactless smart card applications, regardless of protocols and operating systems, in Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled mobile devices. The potential of the U-SAM will be showcased on the NTT DOCOMO stand (Stand B117, Hall 8) in a demonstration featuring how multiple applications based on different contactless technologies, can be accessed on one mobile handset." READ MORE

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has announced the publication of its Mobile Banking Overview - "an educational resource designed to provide analysis of the unique marketing opportunities and attributes that the mobile channel represents for the financial sector. Key subjects include market size, consumer-focused mobile banking products and services, and the mobile media channels available to banks and other financial institutions. It also provides considerations for optimizing mobile banking communications and campaign effectiveness within each channel." READ MORE

First Data Corp. has a growing collection of white papers in its Thought Leadership Library covering a wide range of payments-related topics. The latest papers include:

• Mobile Account Management: The Mobile Commerce Enabler - by Barry McCarthy, President, Mobile Commerce Solutions
• Innovations in Payments and Decoupled Debit Reshape the Power of Merchant Loyalty Programs - by Timothy Horton, Vice President of Product Management
• Financial Institutions Must Rethink Their Remote Deposit Capture Support Models - by Kathleen Houseman, Vice President, Remote Deposit Capture Solutions, and Mark Nevle, Director, Product Development

This morning, the top 5 free finance applications for the Apple iPhone as listed in the iTunes Music store are: Mint.com, Bank of America - Mobile Banking, Bloomberg, Chase Mobile, and PayPal.

Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft Tag. Microsoft says that the tags...

"...tranform physical media (print advertising, billboards,product packages, information signs, in-store merchandising, or even video images)—into live links for accessing information and entertainment online. With the Microsoft Tag application, just aim your camera phone at a Tag and instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps, social networks, promotions, and more. Nothing to type, no browsers to launch!"

Here's a tag I just created that links to the URL for Payments News:

Here's a video with more details. What can you think to do with tags in your organization?