Mobile ticketing, couponing and content firm Mobiqa has been bought by NCR Corporation. NCR says the acquisition enables it to establish a global mobile centre of excellence, which will initially focus on the travel industry, where NCR and Mobiqa expect to realise synergies from their existing solutions.
Located in Edinburgh, Scotland, the mobile centre of excellence will complement NCR’s existing R&D facility in Dundee and enable NCR to extend existing mobile offerings across multiple industry sectors.
“This strategic acquisition signals NCR’s commitment to building out our mobile platform to support the delivery of our seamless multichannel strategy,” says NCR executive vice president, John Bruno. “We are dedicated to making consumers’ experience of interacting with businesses easier by giving them the ability to move seamlessly between self-service mobile, online and kiosk channels.”
Mobiqa specialises in the delivery of optimised mobile boarding passes to the airline industry. The company is able to deliver content to smartphones and legacy handsets via over 600 mobile networks in over 150 countries worldwide. 
Mobiqa uses SMS, MMS, web link and email technologies for barcode delivery to mobile phones and offers fully optimised mobile website content for m-commerce transactions and downloadable applications in the airline, cinema, live events, rail and retail sectors. Its extensive existing customer base stands to benefit from NCR’s continued R&D investment and unrivalled support capabilities on a global basis. NCR and Mobiqa are both active in global standards organisations, including the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which has mandated the use of barcode boarding passes by airlines globally by the end of 2010.
Formed in 2002, Mobiqa was previously a privately owned company that has received funding from Scottish Enterprise, among other investors. It counts major global brands as its customers, including Qatar Airways, Olympic Air, Aegean, Vueling, Spanair, LOT and Ticketmaster.
