The Mobile Dimension

By some estimates, over the next couple of years more than 1 billion people will log in to the Internet for the first time, and most of these log-ins will be via mobile devices (like cell phones) and located in emerging countries. It is also estimated that by 2010, one in three Africans will own a mobile phone. With almost 280 million subscribers in Africa alone, mobile phones are recognized as instruments of change in finance, agriculture, media and, development work.

A recent Gartner report states that the number of mobile payment users worldwide is forecast to reach 73.4 million this year, says Gartner, up 70.4 percent from 2008 when there were 43.1 million users. The research firm predicts that the figure will reach more than 190 million in 2012, representing more than 3 percent of total mobile users worldwide. "Momentum in the mobile payment market gathered further in 2008 with a number of high-profile launches of mobile money transfer services in multiple markets, participation of major global institutions in near-field communication (NFC) payment trials, as well as new payment solutions entering the market," said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. She noted, however, that security concerns, regulatory issues, and an inadequate 'ecosystem' were still holding back growth in the sector.

Gartner defines a mobile payment as paying for a product or service using a mobile technology such as SMS, WAP, USSD or NFC. In terms of both number of users and transaction volumes, Gartner expects Asia-Pacific (including Japan) to maintain the largest share of the market. While mobile payment penetration in Western Europe is expected to rise from 0.9 percent in 2009 to 2.5 percent in 2012, and from 1.7 percent to 3 percent in North America; penetration in Asia-Pacific will rise from 2 percent in 2009 to 3.8 percent in 2012. Mobile payment penetration in EMEA and Latin America is also expected to exceed 3 percent by 2012.

1 year $10B Japanese bank turnaround

Read about PPI's shareholder, Steve Monaghan: HERE

"Naked Credit Transfers"

Pulse has informed PPI and two banks that member banks can be certified to send and receive credit transfers that are not preceded by debits.

Survey link now available

This link (https://www.survey-impact.com/bankpayment_survey_090500/) is your invitation to help us improve the global payments ecosystem by answering a few survey questions. It should only take six to eight minutes of your time. You may supply answers anonymously or at the end, you may optionally provide your name and email address to enter a drawing to win a $500.00 VISA gift card. If you do supply us with your email address, your contact information will NEVER be released to any other company. It will only be used to inform you when a bank launches Greenlist service in your state.

Thanks,

Richard O'Brien - Payment Pathways, Inc.

President & CEO

Bank executives' comments from the annual PULSE meeting in Austin, TX

"Why not describe Greenlist as the directory to enable Debit Card - to - Debit Card money transfers?"

"PULSE would be nuts to NOT enable such a service for its customers"

"Banks need to review Greenlist's Use Case Documentation to determine whether or not its APIs are lightweight yet thorough enough for banks to implement"

"Banks need to review PPI's patents and all pre-existing intellectual property to determine whether any outside entity would sue a bank for using such a resource"

"PPI should put its financial model Excel Workbook on the web for all banks to use to build their ROI justifications."

"PPI should release the results as soon as its marketing survey has sufficient respondents to be statistically valid."

"It is a good idea for PPI to return 50% of fees required by its Engagement & Standby Agreement if banks fail to achieve their chosen target volumes of Greenlist transactions."

"How quickly can PPI move to establish its neutrally positioned web service?"