News
Issue #2002 - 39 (October 2002)
(Updated Oct. 15, 2002)

APPLICATIONS & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

PayCircle Publishes Web Services Payment Specification 1.0 for Mobile Payment

9th October 2002 - PayCircle announced today that the PayCircle Payment Web Service Specification 1.0 is now available for public review. The specification contains WSDL sources, XML schema definitions and supporting documents. Supporting use case scenarios for this specification together with the specification is available at http://www.paycircle.org/downloads

The expected value of and diversity in the types of goods, content, and services that can be supported and delivered via electronic commerce and m-payment are enormous. Mobile / Electronic commerce, now estimated to generate revenues of 1.96 Billion US$ world wide, is expected to grow to 28.0 Billion US$ within the next five years1. PayCircle's focus is to help enable M-Commerce via standard APIs for mobile payment. PayCircle API specifications provide standard payment interfaces for merchants, content and application service provider with the expectation of making payment transaction easier for mobile users, which is essential for future market growth.

"CSG Systems has been actively supporting and promoting the PayCircle approach from the beginning, and the publication of this specification defines a clear path forward", said Malcolm Lewis, Director Mobile Industry, CSG Systems and PayCircle Board member. "It defines a common payment approach for the industry, in addition to the various proprietary systems that exist today. We believe the flexibility offered by an open approach will help accelerate the adoption of electronic commerce, and specifically m-payment." 

"Oracle believes that open, industry-wide standards are the only way to ensure a thriving mobile ecosystem," said Jacob Christfort, vice president of product development for the Mobile Products and Services Division of Oracle Corp. "This specification represents a very important step in that direction, enabling content and application providers to access billing and payment systems using standard Web services."

The PayCircle consortium was formed January 2002 to define standard APIs for mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by application or service providers. Currently the large number of incompatible payment systems has hindered the growth and uptake of m-commerce. PayCircle defines open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards.

"We are also quite pleased with our liaison work established between PayCircle and other organizations like Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), Radicchio and Infrared Data Association (IrDA), ", said PayCircle President, Hans Wolf. "Our successful collaboration efforts with industry fora will help guarantee alignment with other industry standards, and eliminate the type of confusion and fragmentation seen in the industry over the past several years."

About PayCircle
PayCircle is a non-profit organization represents more than 30 companies, including CSG Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Siemens and Sun Microsystems as PayCircle Board Members. PayCircle membership is open to anyone who is active in the mobile payment market such as application developers, payment service providers, merchants, content providers, manufacturers of payment systems, suppliers for mobile infrastructure and mobile devices, network operators, banks, credit card companies, and others. This open approach guarantees that the necessary interfaces can be developed in a cooperative manner. The current list of members and additional information about the consortium and consortium membership is available at its website.  

For more information: www.paycircle.org  

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory:  Standards in mobile payment systems are extremely important. Several efforts are being made by vendor consortia to introduce standards in this area. We think PayCircle is addressing an extremely important aspect of the necessary standards - in the area of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for merchants, content providers and application service providers.  We shall be publishing an interview that we conducted with Jacob Christfort of Oracle - a board member by next week when we shall try to provide a more complete discussion of various issues in m-commerce payment landscape. Needless to say, MobileInfo welcomes PayCircle. Surprisingly, IBM and Microsoft are absent. We wonder why.  

Note: This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Readers should take appropriate caution in developing plans utilizing these products, services and technology architectures.  All trademarks used in this summary are the property of their respective owners.