Mobey Forum
The Mobey Forum, a consortium of banks and mobile device makers, was the first to be established in Europe to promote mobile payments. The Forum’s mandate is to promote competition and act as a liaison between the financial firms and the mobile technology standards bodies, such as the WAP Forum. However, industry observers are saying that the Forum has an ‘attitude problem,’ simply put it has painted wireless operators as archrivals in the battle for ownership of the customer. If the nascent m-commerce sector is to realize its full potential, a divisive playing field will only create rival fractions and hinder the growth of m-commerce.

PayCircle
Now a second consortium, PayCircle, has been formed to develop standards for mobile payments. PayCircle brings together American and European companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Siemens.

The consortium aims "to provide mobile device users worldwide a standard means of making mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by merchants or service providers," the new group said in a statement.

By defining open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards such as Java, XML, and Simple Object Access Protocol, the consortium intends to break the dependency that exists today between the individual applications and numerous proprietary payment systems and processes. PayCircle believes this will go a long way to promote the use of mobile phones to pay for items in shops and on the mobile Internet.

At the moment, PayCircle, according to industry analysts, will have a better chance of getting wireless operators on board thus creating a more cohesive environment on which to take m-commerce to the next level.

With HP and Siemens holding membership in both consortia, ‘we will increasingly see some interaction between PayCircle and Mobey," Ed Kountz, senior analyst with the Tower Group told the press.