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Pay-as-you go, literally2008-04-06 Brothers Arno and Wilter du Toit are on the verge of changing the way we use our cellphones. They have developed a system that allows for easy payment for a range of services, from movie tickets to municipal bills and other accounts. A few years ago Arno, a former banker, and Wilter, a business science student, decided that cellphones were not just communication instruments but could be used as safe and easy payment devices. The average mobile phone now has more computing power than the systems that put men on the moon in the 1960s, so the brothers knew they were on the right track. In essence, Arno says that what they are trying to do is bring the ease and convenience of doing transactions over the Internet to mobile phones. With the backing of Mvelaphanda Holdings, they started Virtual Mobile Technology (VMT), a company which looks at ways to channel companies’ business processes onto mobile devices. VMT is in negotiations with five companies in SA and one abroad. Some businesses, like the recently listed Blue Label, have been advocating the use of mobile phones as payment devices for some time but the brothers say that they are not a direct competitor to them. VMT uses newer, Java-based technology, Arno says. He says other attempts to convert mobile phones into payment devices failed because concluding a transaction was cumbersome for the end user. VMT has taken steps to stop this from happening. “We built it for users, not for the technology,” he says. Wilter says VMT has put a lot of work into making the system as secure as possible. The same algorithms used in developing security for Internet banking have been used by the group. But will they succeed? In some ways it’s out of VMT’s hands. “The end users are the ones driving the technology,” Arno says. Source: My Broadband |
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