Awards Preview – Payment Solution

With the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards ceremony now just two days away, we continue our daily preview with a look at the contenders in the Most Effective Mobile Payment Solution category.

There are three entries vying for honours here. The first is Bango for the Facebook Direct-to-bill Payments system which it powers. Bango has struck some important deals during 2012, most notably with Amazon, Microsoft and Mastercard. But its integration with Facebook, to enable the social giant’s mobile users to easily buy digital content, with the cost charged to their mobile bill, and no need for credit cards or SMS verification, could be the company’s most significant, given Facebook’s mobile ambitions, and indeed, the extend of mobile access to Facebook’s platform. The service initially went live in the UK, US and Germany, and is due to be rolled out globally by the end of the year.

The second contender is the Barclays Digital Banking Team for Barclays Pingit. This is an app that has made the process of transferring money from one person to another so simple, you wonder why no one else in the UK has done it before. Just register, connect your Pingit account to a bank account, load up some funds, and then the next time you find yourself without ready cash on a night out, you can sponge off a friend and pay them back by test message. If they are not registered for Pingit, they have 24 hours to do so in order to accept the payment, which introduces a nice of element of incenvitised virality to the app.

Finally, NeoMobile is in contention for its Onebip Mobile Browser (OMB). This is a direct operator billing-based mobile payment solution which brands, digital and online merchants use to monetise their digital assets such as apps, games and video streaming, to generate revenue in over 70 countries worldwide.

It uses an encrypted identification process to immediately recognise the user’s phone number, to provides secure, automatic authentication, without the need for PIN or password entry, or any SMS confirmation link. The user simply clicks once on the Onebip icon to confirm their transaction. The purchase is automatically charged back to the user’s mobile phone bill.

Onebip currently has direct and indirect connections to over 250 operators globally, has established partnerships with 500 online merchants and manages mobile payments for blue-chip companies and brands.

The winner in this and all other categories will be revealed at the Awards ceremony, which takes place on 29 November at the London Film Museum on the site of County Hall on South Bank, a stones throw from the London Eye.

To book your place at the event, contact Lisa Slavin by email or telephone +44 (0) 20 7183 5285. Individual seats cost £250; a table of 10 costs £2,150.

The 2012 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are sponsored by  Openmarket, 7Digital, Celtra and Propel. To find out more about how to get your business or brand involved, contact John Owen by email or telephone on +44 (0) 77696 74824.