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Thursday, February 23, 2012

New BOKU hybrid account offers mobile NFC and conventional debit card payments

In the last few days we’ve had mobile payment news from Barclays and the Payments Council. Today comes the launch of a product from BOKU that involves a MasterCard debit card and a mobile phone.

BOKU is best known for its work with online merchants and mobile operators, enabling customers to make purchases that are charged to their mobile phone account. It’s now launching a new global mobile payments system that allows shoppers to use their mobile phone as a wallet.

The new BOKU Accounts payments system will be available to mobile network operators. Customers of participating operators will be given an online account, a mobile app, a MasterCard debit card and an NFC sticker that acts as a duplicate debit card. They’ll be encouraged to attach the sticker to their phone, turning any device into a ‘mobile wallet’.

Topping up the online account will add funds to the MasterCard debit card, enabling the conventional card or NFC sticker to be used at retailers. Customers will also be able to transfer money to other BOKU account holders.

The BOKU system will be demonstrated next Monday and Tuesday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s expected to be available in the UK after Easter.

Payment service provider WorldPay was recently announced as the latest organisation to select BOKU as its mobile payments partner, which means WorldPay’s merchants can now enable their customers to pay for purchases via their mobile bill.

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Author: The Fonecast
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Categories: Applications, NewsNumber of views: 8394

Tags: uk nfc payments mastercard worldpay boku

1 comments on article "New BOKU hybrid account offers mobile NFC and conventional debit card payments"

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Jay G

3/3/2012 9:06 AM

BOKU's new mobile wallet (www.boku.com) can accommodate only a prepaid card, which makes it not nearly as appealing to consumers as Google Wallet, but BOKU's most valuable customers are its retailers. And BOKU's proposition to merchants is truly irresistible. Participating merchants are given access to the payment information stored in the virtual wallets of BOKU's users and can use it to send targeted offers to them. And considering the huge size of BOKU's user base, that is a very attractive prospect indeed. For a closer analysis: blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/challenging-google-wallet-boku-makes-the-nfc-field-even-more-crowded.

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