Mobile money roundup: NFC, Indian unbanked, Fiserv and Xcellink

Fiserv continues to spread mobile to smaller American banks. Indian Corporation Bank is using mobile to provide commerce services to 2,000 unbanked villages. Xcellink has secured an important mobile transactions patent in China. Twinlinx and Inside Contactless have announced a partnership to drive NFC-based mobile payments in North America.

Fiserv and Family Credit Union:

Fiserv is an enabler when it comes to mobile banking. We’ve had numerous stories about smaller American financial institutions that it has set up mobile operations for. The nost recent is The Family Credit Union, based out of Iowa and Illinois. The FCU solution allows members to check balances (the single most requested function by customers when it comes to mobile banking) transfer money, pay bills and set up SMS alerts. The service itself is available via SMS or mobile browser - but a downloadable application is on the books.

Indian Corporation Bank:

The most recent Indian bank to realise the potential market in the “unbanked” sector is Indian Corporation Bank. When we say “unbanked” we mean those who have little or no access to normal bank services. Corporation Bank has teamed with mobile operator Tata Indicom and payment provider PayMate to create the service, called Green Money Transfer. It’s a simple service that allows users to send money to one another through their mobile phones. As with many services of this type, money can be loaded into the service through a merchant, so banks aren’t necessary. CorpBank will have 1,000 “Green” vendors in rural areas by the end of 2009, with the intention to have 2,000 by late 2010.

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_indicom-ties-with-corpbank-paymate-for-mobile-money-transfer_1307655

Xcellink:

Xcellink is a payment company… but it didn’t start as a mobile company. It has spent ten years developing secure methods to transfer financial data between customers and merchants through various channels. Now it is transferring those patents and licenses into the mobile arena. The company has now announced that it has secured a big one in China - the patent for an ‘Automated Electronic Funds Transfer System and Method’. Basically this covers automatic transactions between customers and merchants, either wirelessly or wired.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0555106.htm

NFC in the USA:

GoMo News has encountered Inside Contactless before - it’s a company dedicated to turning everything into a mobile payment device using little stickers with NFC chips on them. Twinlinx adds and interesting proposition - it is a mobile-centric company that also creates stickers. However, it’s stickers are geared towards being a middle man between bluetooth and NFC. Essentially, the sticker contains multiple contactless chips which interact with your devices bluetooth and allow it to communicate with many different kinds of NFC.

The two companies have announced they are bringing their partnership to North America, where they are looking to gain support from major bank card brands.