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M-Commerce - fantasy or reality?
 Never heard of it? Or are you thinking you've found a spelling mistake because you know all about E-Commerce already? Talk about M-Commerce has been around for a long while, after all, the BBC wrote an article about it almost seven years ago - so is it all a myth?
Definition
"A monetary transaction made over a portable device."
Buying a book from Amazon while you're wi-fi from your laptop is technically M-Commerce. You could consider calling and reading your credit card details from your mobile is M-Commerce too. But we're most concerned about transactions you make directly on your mobile phone and even if you didn't call it M-Commerce, you might have already experienced it.
Premium rate calls
This is when the cost of the call pays for the service you get on your phone - for example a charge of £5 is made on your bill for a 3 minute call of today's horoscope. The provider of the service is taking a cut of the £5 to pay for it. The lion's share is often going to your network provider such as orange, O2 or Vodafone.
Reverse billing
When you send a text message to download a ringtone, music or wallpaper, the text you receive as a confirmation is charged to your mobile bill.
Neither of these systems are very flexible. The amount you can charge is set at the outset and fixed, making it a bit like a pound shop - everything on one number has to cost the same. And the network provider takes the bigger cut.
That means you have mobile phone networks operating like a bank, but without the same regulations - they have no obligation to refund if someone else has cloned your phone. This system doesn't verify who you are either, it assumes as your mobile is a personal item, that it's you using it - not very helpful when you've just left it in a taxi.
WAP payments
A WAP site is just like being online on your mobile (have a look at this month's feature on text part 3 - WAP). So it's possible to use a webpage to pay for products using your credit card. However, until 3G becomes widespread, while there are already many possibilities, the internet on your mobile is in its infancy.
Secure payment applications on your mobile
Rapide also supply groundbreaking secure SMS messaging. Instead of accessing a secure area on a WAP site, you can download the security software direct to the mobile phone. Information moving between the supplier and receiver is encrypted - which sounds very James Bond, but it's actually really simple to use and most importantly makes the data completely confidential. When you access the information using a PIN, it's presented in a graphical format, just like you the way your're used to seeing a HTML email. While it's perfect for payments, you may have other needs that deal with confidential information with your staff and customers - let us know if you've got some ideas you'd like to try.
For making payments, the last two depend on a consistent standard between financial institutions and retailers so transactions can be made with any supplier from any credit card or bank account.
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Call us on 02476 011 911 if you'd like to know more about secure SMS from Rapide
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