Fiserv Scores Mobile ‘Triple Play,’ But No POS Payments Soon

Although processor Fiserv Inc. dived in to mobile banking and payments head first on Tuesday with its announcement that it would offer mobile services through three channels on one platform, it will be some time before mobile point-of-sale payments become available on the new product. Dubbed Fiserv Mobile Money, the service supports bill payments and can process point-of-sale payments through mobile devices, but Todd Lesher, division president of e-banking services at Fiserv, tells Digital Transactions News the rollout of the latter capability will be down the road. Fiserv clients can run the product in-house or through a hosted service. Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv's technology provider is Mobile Commerce Ltd., or M-Com, of Auckland, New Zealand. M-Com is an 8-year-old firm whose clients include ANZ Banking Group and Westpac Banking Corp. in New Zealand and Australia, and General Electric Co.'s GE Money unit. Its major U.S. client is Washington Mutual Inc. Fiserv Mobile Money can be delivered across the three major channels mobile banking uses today?Short Message Service, the platform behind text messaging; the mobile Internet, or WAP, for Wireless Application Protocol; and as a downloadable application. Fiserv, which has about 8,000 financial-institution clients, already offered some mobile-banking services, including a browser-based one announced in March. By offering the new package as an in-house service, Fiserv hopes to attract the top 200 U.S. financial institutions. At the same time, the hosted service could appeal to the small banks and credit unions that form the core of Fiserv's 8,000-institutiton client base, because they're less likely than large institutions to run such services themselves. “What they want is ubiquity,” says Nick Holland, senior analyst at Aite Group LLC, Boston. “For the broadest possible adoption you have to have something that's browser-based; for the most common denominator you have SMS.” The in-house platform is available now; Fiserv expects the hosted service to be ready in mid-2009. Customers will be able to enroll for Mobile Money through a variety of online and offline venues such as in branches, at ATMs, through call centers, and through their mobile devices or on the Web. Lesher says the cross-channel capability is a major reason why Fiserv chose M-Com. “It appeared to us that M-Com had the most unique offering … it was a triple play,” he says. “It will enable us to provide consumers with a consistent experience.” M-Com chief executive officer Adam Clark adds that “hundreds of thousands” of consumers already are using M-Com's technology through the company's earlier partnerships. A press release announcing the service claims Fiserv Mobile Money is the first service that supports SMS, WAP, and downloadable applications and offers offline and online enrollment. That's hard to verify independently in a fast-changing market with myriad small providers. Obopay Inc. delivers its services across the same SMS, WAP and download channels, but its technology supports only payments, not mobile banking such as the monitoring of account balances or transferring money between accounts (Digital Transactions News, July 8). Fiserv believes its clients' customers are ready for mobile services. Results of an April survey of 1,007 cell-phone users commissioned by Fiserv's CheckFree bill-pay unit show 75% of respondents would consider using mobile-banking services if offered, up from 49% in a similar survey in 2006. Still, POS payments on handsets will have to wait at Fiserv. While they've gotten lots of press and have been the subject of many tests, Aite's Holland says mobile POS payments still lack the network components, notably significant merchant acceptors and consumer users, to make them viable for providers. “There's no need at this point; there's not only few places [that accept them]; there's little marketing money going into it,” he says. Fiserv and M-Com are developing more mobile-banking and -payment services at a facility in Norcross, Ga. The companies didn't disclose financial aspects of their partnership.