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volume 8 • spring 2015
MOZIDO
Austin, Texas-based mobile payments startup Mozido spent the past year in rapid growth mode. The company bolstered its cloud-based, white-label platform by acquiring a majority stake in NFC mobile wallet specialist CorFire, made a major foray into the Chinese market by purchasing Beijing-based proces-
sor PayEase and hired prepaid pioneer and 2014 Paybefore Industry Achievement Award Winner Ron Hynes
to lead the firm’s global operations.
For Mozido, each of
these moves can be traced back to what it sees as the drivers of mobile
commerce: technological advances; massive potential in emerging markets; and the key role of prepaid.
All are areas of emphasis for the company, which offers its mobile wallet services to financial institu- tions, merchants and telecoms, among others.
“The rise of NFC, tokenization and HCE [host card emu- lation] will lead to more merchant acceptance of mo- bile, which will cause mobile commerce to grow faster and faster,” predicts Michael Liberty, Mozido founder and chairman of global strategic initiatives. “Globally, China is going to see incredible growth, along with India, Indonesia and the Middle East,” he notes.
As for prepaid, Mozido sees it as a natural partner for mobile commerce, bringing the benefits of mobile to the financially underserved and fully banked consumers who use prepaid to fund mobile shop- ping, Liberty says.
Mozido’s expansion plans have earned significant backing. The company in fall 2014 closed a $185 million funding round to continue expanding its platform and global presence.
“The mobile commerce market is moving quickly in a positive direction, and we’re ready to benefit from building out our business model,” he adds.
SUBWAY
Quick service restaurant giant SUBWAY (Franchise World Headquarters LLC) is known for offering customers lots of choices when ordering a sandwich. The company also has made customization a key ingredient in its mobile payments strategy, taking
a form-agnostic approach that enables customers to order and pay how they want.
In 2014, SUBWAY signed on as an early adopter
of Apple Pay acceptance and unveiled its own mobile app, which features QR code-based payments, an order-ahead service and loyalty integration.
Offering multiple payment options is vital to creating
a convenient customer experience, according to Carman Wenkoff, who, as the company’s chief infor- mation officer, is responsible for spearheading its mobile payments strategy. “Our philosophy is to make payments as consumer-friendly as possible and not try
to force customers into using a certain type of payment,” he says.
Being an early adopter of mobile payments is in line with the compa- ny’s history of loyalty and payments innova- tion. SUBWAY launched
its first loyalty program, known as the Sub Club, in the 1980s. That stamp-based program was replaced by a loyalty platform, which was integrated into the Subway Card, a reloadable prepaid card launched
in 2006.
In addition to its mobile payments initiatives,
the restaurant chain is on its way toward certifying all U.S. locations with EMV-compliant POS terminals by the October 2015 fraud liability shift deadline. And some new plans are in the works, too. “We’re taking a good look at express checkout, enrollment products and alternative payment networks,” says Wenkoff. “We have 16,000 restaurants in 106 coun- tries outside of the U.S. to work on as well, so we have enough to keep us busy for a little while.”
The mobile wallet pro- vider sees plenty of potential in emerging markets and prepaid.
The mega-chain is making mobile a key ingredient of the customer experience.
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