High-Profile Players Sign on to Promote Mobile-Merchant Technology

As the young market for mobile payments on smart phones takes shape, industry players are scrambling to pair up with world-famous partners with massive numbers of consumer and business customers. Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc., for example, is selling hardware for its PAYware Mobile application in Apple Inc.’s retail outlets (Digital Transactions News, May 27). And this week, specialty wireless payments provider Apriva Inc. reported that AT&T Inc. is offering the AprivaPay and AprivaPay Professional mobile-payments applications to its small and mid-sized business customers.

The reselling agreement gives Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Apriva an entrée into more than 3 million businesses that AT&T serves. Apriva works with about 280 so-called channel partners to distribute its services. Although not a merchant acquirer or other card processor as most of Apriva’s channel partners are, AT&T already sells Apriva services that support specialty wireless payment terminals. Under the new agreement, the Dallas-based phone giant also will offer the two new Apriva applications that enable smart phones to accept card payments. “It was kind of the next step in our relationship,” Bill Ramsey, Apriva’s vice president of business development, tells Digital Transactions News.

AprivaPay is a browser-based application that enables card-not-present transactions, while AprivaPay Professional is a downloadable app that can process card-present sales with an optional Bluetooth card reader (Digital Transactions News, Jan. 20). The app is available on mobile devices running on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system. A version for Apple’s iPhone is coming soon, says Ramsey. Apriva expects to have an app for Google Inc.’s Android operating system out in early August, to be followed shortly afterward by one for Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry.

AT&T is the first wireless carrier to offer the new Apriva services. An AT&T spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News via e-mail that the carrier will sell them to businesses through its direct sales force, AT&T’s SMART Web site, and call centers. AT&T is charging $14.95 and $19.95 per month for AprivaPay and AprivaPay Professional, respectively. The spokesperson says AT&T does not generate transaction-based revenue. “Instead, we enable the handheld app from Apriva, and charge customers monthly for the application,” he says.

The “overwhelming majority” of small businesses use smart phones, according to an AT&T release. While currently small, payments via smart phones are expected to boom as the phones proliferate and processors and specialty software companies continue to introduce services and apps enabling home-based entrepreneurs and small companies to use the phones as relatively inexpensive, portable card terminals. “Given the growth in mobile payments, AT&T and Apriva are working together to serve businesses wanting to innovate and enhance efficiencies, while offering their customers a heightened level of convenience and customer satisfaction,” the spokesperson says. He says the Apriva payment services will benefit a number of vertical industries, including home services such as lawn-care providers and gardeners; heating and air-conditioning services; delivery services, certain professionals, and multilevel marketing companies such as beauty-products sellers.

Ramsey says channel partners representing 60% of Apriva’s volume are now offering AprivaPay and AprivaPay Professional. The customers they’re signing, he adds, are not cannibalizing Apriva’s established business of supporting specialty wireless terminals. “These are usually net new adds,” he says. “They’re not abandoning those terminals.”