Round-Up: Mobile Payments $8 Billion By 2012; MoniLink; Expanding Services

–ABI Research has predicted that the market for mobile fund transfers will grow to a revenue opportunity of nearly $8 billion by 2012 from a start of $10 million last year. However, they’ll need to partner with a banking institution to do this (or get a banking license themselves, I suppose) reports Cellular News. I don’t think this refers to mobile payment solutions, although it could certainly be used in that way, but rather transfer of money between people. ABI reckons that international fund transfers will be the majority of the market.

–In the UK Vodafone has launched MoniLink, a banking service that lets customers check their balance, request a mini-statement and top-up their or their friends’/family’s ‘pay as you talk’ mobile phones. “The Monilink system has been set up by Monitise and VocaLink and has so far signed up HSBC, first direct, Alliance & Leicester, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland” reports FinExtra. The service works via an application on the handset and will be free until the end of the year.

–The New York Times has a piece on a recent report by Vodafone and Nokia that mobile technology has the ability to take banking services beyond the urban areas in poorer nations. “When Vodafone began a pilot cellphone project in Kenya, Nick Hughes, the company’s head of international payments, said, “the idea was to reduce the cost of loan disbursal and recovery, but what we found was that customers were using it for person-to-person transfers”…As a result, the company introduced a commercial program in Kenya three months ago to make financial transactions possible by mobile phone. Customers have flocked to the service. “We’ve passed the 175,000 mark,” Mr. Hughes said, “and they’re signing up at about 2,500 a day.”

–PayPal Mobile Checkout has opened for business reports Cellular News. This was mooted back in March.

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