Monthly Archive for September, 2010

A startup called MobilePay USA says it can offer mobile payments with just an iPhone app, letting users leave their wallet at home.

The winner of the Audience Choice award at the TechCrunch Disrupt show, the service isn’t available yet. Kyle Circle, the president of MobilePay, told the audience that the service could go live in November.

Although companies like Square have attracted attention because of their ability to allow consumers to pay on the go with a minimum of fuss, the difference between Square and MobilePay is the lack of hardware. Square allows merchants to accept a credit card via a small reader. MobilePay, on the other hand, stores the credit card digitally – and not in the phone itself, should it be lost.

More consumers are using mobile phones to pay bills, but specifically how they are doing so requires more study, according Fiserv Inc., which identified the gap in information earlier this year when it polled 2,000 households as part of the technology company’s 2010 Billing Household online survey (see story).

Consumers are using mobile phones to pay bills not only by calling them in but also through text messaging and via Web browsers to access online-banking sites and billers’ sites, Eric Leiserson, senior research analyst in Fiserv’s Bill Solutions group, tells PaymentsSource.

“It’s the mobile-phone affect,” Leiserson says. “There’s a lot going on with mobile that makes it the most interesting space out there.”