Canadian Capabilities: Mobile Banking, Commerce & Payment

The Social Mobile Payments Conference Series would like to thank the Canadian Consulate in Miami for their sponsorship of and participation in the Social Mobile Payments: Americas event. As the Audio/Video and Technology sponsor the Canadian Consulate highlights the capabilities of Canadian companies that are leaders in the worldwide mobile financial service industry.

Canada is truly striving to lead the way in the Americas and Gulf Bay Consulting is glad to be of assistance. We are proud to present Mr. Vincent Kadar, President of Telepin Software and highlight his company as a representation of Canadian innovation and ingenuity in the mobile financial services ecosystem.

Vincent Kadar, CEO, Telepin Software 

Vincent Kadar, CEO of Telepin Software, has almost 20 years of executive experience in software technology companies for wireless and telecom networks.

Prior to his role with Telepin, Vincent was founder and CTO at Airwide Solutions, a leading provider of mobile messaging infrastructure. Mr. Kadar has also served as Director of Wireless Technology at InfoSpace Inc, and in senior technology positions at CrossKeys Systems and Accenture.

Vincent frequently presents at industry conferences and has been published in leading magazines. For more information, visit his blog about mobile money: www.mobilemoneytransactions.com.

Introduction

Canadian companies have proven experience providing payments technology for government, financial institutions, retailers and enterprises that include: search and advertising, retail, sales and customer support, security and point of sale solutions. Solutions provided by Canadian companies offer more than online shopping from a mobile phone; they can enhance and enable end-to-end consumer experiences throughout online and physical commerce.

Market Opportunity

The global growth of the connected consumer, the explosion of mobile adoption and the emergence of social media are quickly changing the way we interact, obtain information, and pay for goods and services.  The new digital economy requires new ways for all consumers to securely transact.  It requires convenient, cost effective solutions that allow organizations to easily monetize digital content and participate in the exploding online and nano-payment markets.

Mobile Commerce enablers, including device manufacturers and mobile network operators have the opportunity to grow their existing market share and extend their service offerings to new markets.

(Juniper Research predicts that) NFC retail payments will exceed $180 billion globally by 2017, more than a seven-fold increase over 2012.  The leading regions of North America, Western Europe and Far East 7 China will contribute 90% of this market value as smartphones with the NFC payment technology becoming standard.  2001 was a watershed year for NFC payments. Major technology infrastructure standards were finalized  many mobile network operators committed to the market and NFC pilots from both mobile operators and financial institutions transitioned to commercial service. Above all, NFC-enabled smartphone models were announced by almost all handset manufacturers.

Industry Trends

• Increased Smartphone Penetration: Over 50% of people under 35 have used their mobile phone to shop and almost 15% have purchased goods with their phones.
• Shifting Consumer Behavior  Today over 100M people use their phones for payments but this is expected to grow to half a billion by 2014.
• Contactless Transaction Technology: With “Near Field Communication” (NFC) people will be able to tap their phone and make an immediate purchase.
• Take-Up of Mobile Advertising:  Japan is leading the consumer markets.  They have built in mobile devices on shopping carts to assist customers in finding and researching their purchase.

Canadian Landscape

Canada is an established leader in payments technology.  Canadian carriers and banks are in final stages of negotiations to transform Canada’s payment ecosystem. In May 2012, the Canadian banking sector published standards to pave the way for electronic payments. They include guidelines for secure handling of customer data during mobile transactions.

• It is expected that the majority of Canadians will have NFC-enabled smartphones by 2014.
• On May 15, 2012, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was the first Canadian bank to announce a deal with one of Canada’s major carriers, Rogers, to allow customers to carry a digital wallet on their mobile phones. The system uses NFC.
• Enstream: A joint venture of Canada’s 3 main telecom carriers plans to launch a platform to connect with all banks by the end of Summer 2012.
• The Royal Canadian Mint has been monitoring electronic payment trends for several years, for its potential impact on coinage trends and overall demand.  It is piloting “MintChip” in 2012 which will enable users to carry their MintChip with them (via a chip in their device) or store it in a virtual account (cloud) and access it remotely for in-store purchases.

Canada Value Proposition

The list below is representative of Canadian companies with innovative technology solutions to enable mobile banking, commerce and payments.

Search and Advertising
	Calgary, AB	Leveraging intelligence from searches and interactions through their app, Poynt is a leader in the mobile ad publishing space to deliver targeted relevant ads and offers from retailers wanting to capture the consumer at the purchase decision point.
	Waterloo, ON	Snapsort has developed product recommendation technology that provides instant and personalized camera recommendations unavailable anywhere else.  The successful platform compares, reviews, summarizes and educates about cameras in one place.  In November 2011, Snapsort raised funds to expand product recommendation technology to 20 other verticals.
Retail
	Ottawa, ON	Shopify is a powerful solution to run an online store and sell goods online. Stores powered by Shopify include a professionally designed storefront, unlimited web hosting, a secure shopping cart, a customizable domain name, and more. For the past 2 years, Shopify has been one of the fastest growing companies in Canada, now with over 20,000 customers in 80 countries.
Sales and Customer Support
	Halifax, NS	GoInstant is “assisted sale” software that allows a customer and sales agents to navigate the pages on a website simultaneously without the need of downloads or plug-ins.  Their unique technology unleashes new business opportunities to improve customer support and enhance sales on the web.
Security
	Toronto, ON	Recognized as one of the top Canadian up-and-comers, SecureKey  is developing middleware for performing Near Field Communication (NFC) in a secure way.  SecureKey technology enables plastic cards to be virtualized into mobile phones and PCs without sacrificing security. They have trials underway with VISA and some of the largest financial and government agencies in the world.
Point of Sale
	Vancouver, BC	Hyperwallet provides online and mobile payments, cross-border payments, prepaid card payments and financial technology solutions to enterprise-level organizations across 4 continents.  Furthermore, their platform supports cross-channel, cross-border, multi-currency and multi-language deployments in a single infrastructure.
	Vancouver, BC	Payfirma is a leading innovator of mobile and payment technology, being the first to commercialize a mobile point of sale with a credit card reader.  They offer a full range of traditional point-of-sale solutions, eCommerce capabilities such as hosted checkout and recurring billing, and at the forefront, a mobile payment suite.  The mobile solution is being rapidly adopted by businesses that typically have yet to accept credit cards, such as musicians, artists, plumbers, and service oriented companies. Payfirma processes more than $1 million per day across its merchants accepting credit cards through mobile, eCommerce and in-store payment solutions.