Yet another mobile-commerce venture is being formed, and this one could have some staying power.
CorFire, a mobile-commerce subsidiary of SK C&C of South Korea, and InComm Inc. of Atlanta, announced Tuesday that they are teaming up to provide merchants with a branded mobile commerce platform with a mobile wallet and built-in coupon and rewards functionality.
The capabilities could be accessed as an application or as a mobile-optimized website, depending on the needs of the merchant, representatives from the companies said in interviews. This would be the first foray into mobile payments for InComm, a provider of gift card and other prepaid services.
InComm's established relationships with thousands of retailers will set the mobile venture with CorFire apart from others, Jon Squire, CorFire's senior vice president of business development and strategy, said in an interview.
"I know there's a lot of noise [in the mobile commerce market], but I think the thing that's really unique here is the relationships," he said.
Dustin Young, InComm's vice president of product strategy, agreed that InComm's years of building relationships with merchants will differentiate it from companies that focus more on technological developments.
"So [CorFire's] got the technology to deliver to the handset, and we have the vast integration with merchants," he said in an interview.
As other mobile commerce ventures have done, the companies plan to support near-field communication technology for payments once it becomes widely available, Young said. Until then, the companies intend to use available technology such as bar codes, he said.
The companies anticipate a partial rollout of their system in the fourth quarter.
Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a consulting firm based in Centennial, Colo., said InComm's merchant relationships indeed could give the venture more traction than other mobile commerce startups.
"It would certainly give them a solid footing and in some ways give them an advantage," he said.
