HP, Lucent, Oracle, Siemens and Sun have established a new consortium to standardise mobile payment and encourage worldwide growth of mobile-commerce (m-commerce).
The new consortium - PayCircle - will develop, utilize and promote open interfaces for mobile payment and create a worldwide standard means of making mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used vendors or service providers.
Announced earlier today at the 3GSM World Congress in France, PayCircle intends to define open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards.
Until now, the large number of incompatible payment systems has hindered the spread of m-commerce.
However, with the new system, mobile device users can access their network operators' or payment service providers' mobile commerce offerings without having to install any new software.
Security will be maintained by using mobile communication built-in security mechanisms, such as SIM cards, for authentication.
PayCircle aims to break the dependency that exists between the individual applications and numerous proprietary payment systems and processes.
By utilizing PayCircle interfaces, future applications can be developed independently of payment systems and with simple interfaces to such systems.
The open PayCircle interfaces will enable products and services worldwide to be billed via different payment systems, such as prepaid or postpaid monthly phone bills credit cards, etc.
PayCircle is a non-profit organization and its membership is open to anyone who is active in the mobile payment market such as application developers, payment service providers, or content providers.