Amdocs launches cloud mobile payments solution

It seems that every week there’s a new company, startup, or financial institution that is launching a new way to pay from, issue rewards, or power transactions from a mobile phone.

Consumers around the world are increasingly buying and making payments for everyday transactions using their mobile devices, with the total value of mobile payments expected to rise by $430 billion by 2015.

PayPal spokesperson Anuj Nayar put up an interesting blog post today about how the company wants to be branded with regard to payments in the future. Basically, the company doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into being just a mobile payments company. From Nayar’s post.

As previously rumored, the carrier-led mobile payments venture known as Isis has officially launched in its first two test markets today: Austin, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Vivotech announced a Linux-based mobile payments device that incorporates Near Field Communication (NFC) wireless technology. The ARM9-based, PCI 2.1-certified & Vivopay 8100& offers a traditional pinpad and mag-stripe reader, but also supports contactless payments via NFC-enabled mobile phones, with features such as coupon redemption and discount vouchers....

As if there wasn’t enough going on in the mobile payments space already, what with NFC, dongles, wallets and cloud apps. Now payments company MasterCard and ING Group have teamed up on a payment trial that mixes mobile and Internet payments to support shopping scenarios involving a mix of devices.

Apple decided to forgo NFC support with the release of the iPhone 5, but that hasn’t stopped payments companies from continuing to invest in the space. MasterCard released a software development kit for its mobile PayPass technology with support for the Android and Blackberry OS 7 platforms.

Written by: Peter Dinham | Published in: MarketThere’s huge potential for further growth in mobile payments over the next few years, with only 2.1 percent of mobile users currently making m-payments, in a global payments market where debit cards continue to take marketshare away from credit cards.

For small business owners or individuals selling goods or services, a common business challenge is the ability to accept payments from customers wanting to use a credit card. This is especially true for those who conduct business “in the field” or otherwise don’t have a fixed point-of-sale system.