American Express, which recently launched its own online payments service for US residents, has now announced a partnership with mobile payment service Payfone. Payfone will combine its mobile authorisation and payment services with Serve, the new American Express payments platform.
Serve already gives customers in the USA a ‘virtual wallet’ that can be accessed online and via a mobile app. There’s also a prepaid Serve card that can be used in shops where American Express cards are accepted.
The new partnership will give consumers the ability to make purchases from online merchants using their mobile phone number, with payments being debited from their mobile account or their Serve account.
Rodger Desai, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Payfone, said “This relationship will be a defining force in the industry. By teaming up with American Express’ new digital payments platform, Serve, we are not only delivering greater choice to consumers and merchants, with one of the most comprehensive and advanced e-wallets in the industry, we are also enabling mobile operators to participate in the transaction flow and benefit from an entirely new revenue source. Over 5 billion people worldwide currently have mobile phones, however less than 2 billion have credit cards. It’s our goal to make the mobile phone number the new accepted way to pay. We look forward to working with American Express and our mobile operator partners in defining and driving the mobile payments industry.”