About Mobey Forum

• What is Mobey Forum?
• Why was Mobey Forum founded?
• What is Mobey Forum’s vision?
• What is the relationship between Mobey Forum and mobile network operators?

What is Mobey Forum?

Mobey Forum is a non-profit, global, financial industry-driven forum, which was established in 2000. Mobey Forum’s mission is to encourage the use of mobile technology in financial services. Its members today collectively represent more than 450 million banking customers globally, around 30 percent of the market.

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Why was Mobey Forum founded?

The mission of Mobey Forum is to encourage the use of mobile technology in financial services. Mobey Forum aims to accelerate the take-off of user-friendly mobile financial services by promoting open, non-proprietary technology standards and educating organisations on the commercial benefits available.

The association’s vision is to create a prosperous ecosystem that is based on sustainable and neutral standards to support mobile financial services that can be targeted at a mass market.  End user choice and trust in the ecosystem is vital for the industry to achieve its potential.

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What is Mobey Forum’s vision?

Creating a prosperous mobile financial services ecosystem, where members are able to create new profitable business, based on the following principles:

• Provisioning of mobile financial services is open and standards-based
• The services are interoperable and targeted for mass-market
• Customer has the freedom to choose any service provider and to change them independent of others
• End-user trust in financial services is maintained.

What is the relationship between Mobey Forum and mobile network operators?

Several mobile operators are members of Mobey Forum and more are welcome. Building mobile financial services involves the cooperation and interaction between different industries supporting the core competences and business strategies of each participant. It is the belief of Mobey Forum that a successful mobile financial services ecosystem can only be built through such cooperation across sectors, which respects the core business requirements of each key stakeholder.

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Mobey Forum Initiatives

• How does Mobey Forum work?
• What are the outcomes of Mobey Forum’s work?

How does Mobey Forum work?

Mobey Forum mainly works through task forces, workgroups – each focusing on a special interest area – and through quarterly plenary member meetings.

Each two-day member meeting is hosted by a different Mobey Forum member organisation. The meetings consist of highly informative presentations, case studies and panel discussions. Workgroups and task forces meet for face-to-face working sessions on the pre-meeting day of each member meeting.

All members are entitled to participate in the Mobey Forum member meetings and task forces. Each group has its own Chairman and all activities of Mobey Forum are managed by the Executive Director.

The strategy of Mobey Forum is set by the Board of Directors, which consists of the founding members and other elected representatives from the membership. The Mobey Forum Secretariat is responsible for all administrative operations, member support and organising the Mobey Forum work and member meetings.

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What are the outcomes of Mobey Forum’s work?

The participants of Mobey Forum work collectively to create best practice guidelines, educational materials and white papers that provide senior decision makers with the insight required to make informed decisions regarding mobile financial services.

Many of these documents are free to download from the Mobey Forum website and include:

• Clear industry guidelines for implementations
• Security assessment and reviews for mobile financial services
• Comprehensive documentation on the recommended architectures for a wide range of financial services.

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Mobey Forum Membership

• Who are the members of Mobey Forum?
• What are the benefits of being a member of Mobey Forum?
• Who can join  Mobey Forum and how?
• Who is on the Board of Directors?
• What is the role of the Executive Director?

Who are the members of Mobey Forum? 

Mobey Forum is a well-established, global organisation with over 50 members, each being an important player in their field of business. This collective body of bank members represents more that 450 million bank customers globally. Mobey Forum membership encompasses leading financial institutions, payment processors, mobile operators and handset manufacturers as well as other technology vendors and companies that want to be actively involved in creating the future of mobile financial services. A complete list of the member organisations is available here.

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What are the benefits of being a member of Mobey Forum?

Organisations that participate in the work of the association will be at the forefront of the development of mobile financial services. They can contribute to and influence Mobey Forum’s industry recommendations and take an active role when new trials and implementations are planned and created. The forum also provides an excellent opportunity to interact with the leading industry players. Furthermore, the exclusive industry information gained at Mobey Forum meetings is considered  a very valuable return on the membership fee investment.

If you are interested in joining Mobey Forum, please view membership benefits for further details.

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Who can join  Mobey Forum and how? 

There are three membership categories in Mobey Forum: Full Members, Associate Members and Institutional Members. Full Membership is available to financial institutions. Associate Membership is open to all parties with an interest in shaping the future of mobile financial services and partaking in active dialogue with the leading players in the financial services and mobile industries, while institutional Membership is for academic, governmental or public institutions.

Annual fees cover the cost of meetings and workshops, administration and publication development.

To make further enquiries, please email the Mobey Forum Secretariat at mobeyforum(at)mobeyforum.org

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Who is on the Board of Directors?

The Board of Directors includes founding member organisations and other Full Members elected to the Board. It is responsible for setting Mobey Forum's strategy and for approving all deliverables before release to the market. The current Board of Directors consists of:

Ron van Wezel, Deutsche Bank

Bent Bentsen, DnB NOR

Boris Brunner, UBS

Matt Calman, Bank of America

Jordi Guaus, laCaixa

Martti Granberg, Nokia

Juha Risikko, Nordea

Kristian Sorensen, Nets

Nick Staib, HSBC

Amir Tabakovic, PostFinance

Wim Westerhof, Rabobank

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What is the role of the Executive Director?

Ms Sirpa Nordlund currently serves as Executive Director of Mobey Forum. She is responsible for the direction of Mobey Forum initiatives, coordinates and manages the organisation’s strategic planning and oversees the operational delilverables of the group.  Nordlund works closely with the Chairs of each workgroup and task force and is directly responsible to the Board of Directors and Mobey Forum membership.

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Mobey Forum in the marketplace

• How will the consumers benefit from Mobey Forum’s work?
• What is the state of the mobile payments market in Europe and elsewhere in the world?
• To achieve complete market interoperability, will central banks or regulators have to mandate a global mobile payments standard?
• Who owns the payment channel?

How will the consumers benefit from Mobey Forum’s work?

The strategy of  Mobey Forum is to promote user-friendly and convenient services, to maintain the consumer freedom of choice and consistently look at the consumer proposition. When  Mobey Forum’s vision is fully implemented, consumers will have a ubiquitous payment device with which they can use a wide range of financial services conveniently.

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What is the state of the mobile payments market in Europe and elsewhere in the world?

Creating a scalable and sustainable mobile payments ecosystem takes time.  It not just about the deployment of handsets and end-user acceptable and engagement of the technology, it is also about the merchant point-of-sale infrastructure and the back office systems. 

The mobile payments market in Europe is reaching the next stage of development. Mass roll-out plans for near field communication (NFC) based mobile contactless payments have been announced by banks and mobile operators in France, and more recently in the Netherlands. In other countries banks have also announced plans to develop new country-wide mobile payment schemes.

Looking outside Europe, mature mobile payment initiatives already exist in Asia and Africa. These are still more mobile operator than bank driven. Recently other non-bank financial institutions have entered the market as well, for example Obopay and Nokia Money.

In North-America the focus has been very much on mobile banking, but mobile payments is becoming more prominent now.

There is still quite a diverse picture, but within two or three years we can expect mobile payments to become mainstream in at least some parts of the world.

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To achieve complete market interoperability, will central banks or regulators have to mandate a global mobile payments standard?

This market space is still emerging. Market players are focused on the development of new services for their customers and bringing those to market faster than the competition. In such a dynamic environment a closed loop model provides certain advantages (like speed, cost and exclusivity) over an interoperable and open system. Mobile payment providers need to get traction first for their new services before interoperability becomes a priority.

When required, interoperability can be achieved in a number of ways. Mobey Forum's recent white paper on Remote Mobile Payments provides a useful overview.

In general, the mobile payment space is much too dynamic and rich in variety to aim for a 'global standard'. But when mobile payments reach maturity, standardisation will be on the agenda of market parties. For instance, important work is already underway in some areas, like the European Payments Council work on mobile contactless payments.

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Who owns the payment channel?

It is key for both banks and operators to retain the relationship with the customer and be able to differentiate their brand and service offering. If those conditions are met and a viable business model is available, it should not really matter who is delivering or owning the mobile channel technology.

Partnerships are always an important consideration for a bank when it seeks to best execute its strategy. Such partnerships can include mobile operators, but also other actors in the mobile ecosystem. Such decisions to partner or not, and with whom, are evaluated against business criteria so there is no template of success - each decision is made individually, based on criteria like the financials for the case at hand, and the value the partner can add as opposed to an independent approach.

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If you are interested in becoming a Mobey Forum member please contact Elina Mattila on elina.mattila(at)mobeyforum.org

If you are a journalist and would like to organise a media briefing with a Mobey Forum representative, please contact Kirsty Pearson or Sarah Jones at iseepr: kirsty(at)iseepr.co.uk or sarah(at)iseepr.co.uk on + 44 (0) 1943 468007