A San Francisco company has introduced a system designed to facilitate deployment of near-field communication payments and other contactless services by resolving fragmentation and interoperability issues.
Zenius Solutions Inc. said it is in discussions with various card issuers and acquirers, but only Discover Financial Services has acknowledged its involvement with the company.
Zenius provides source code and consulting expertise for Discover's Zip contactless product.
Troy Bernard, Discover's director of chip payment technology, said in an interview that he is still evaluating how Zenius' NFC Transactions Suite might help Discover with its contactless endeavors.
But Zenius is addressing a problem affecting the market, Bernard said.
"Our customers are acquirers, issuers and merchants, and all are interested in bringing about mobile payments, redeeming offers tied to loyalty cards and coupons, and consolidating them into one wallet," he said. "Having a common product that is compatible would benefit the industry as a whole."
Bernard did not speculate on how the Zenius suite, a modular set of software frameworks and applications, might affect Discover's involvement with Isis, the card brand's mobile payments partnership with AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA Inc. and Verizon Wireless. Barclays PLC was announced as the venture's first issuer, but this week Isis said it plans to open its system to multiple issuers and networks.
The Zenius NFC Transactions Suite comprises the Zenius NFC Framework, which enables communication with multiple secure elements, such as the chips that store information on a mobile phone; the Zenius Mobile Wallet, a rebrandable electronic wallet that enables users to select and manage applications; Zenius Open-loop MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover applets; and Zenius White-label card applications for closed-loop NFC payments.
The company also announced the release of M-Transact, software that turns NFC-enabled smartphones into NFC acceptance point of sale and transaction devices; and Zenius TransactionServer, an advanced transaction server supporting the Zenius White-label applications.
The suite, which was announced last week, provides all mobile payment stakeholders — carriers, banks, issuers, merchants, marketers, developers and manufacturers — with a centralized means to deploy NFC mobile payment applications and systems.
"The market desperately needed a hardware-agnostic architecture that supports the global NFC ecosystem," John Wiese, Zenius' president and chief executive, said in a press release. "That's why we have been working closely with all major and emerging enablers in the value chain to build an interoperable system from the ground up that can both fuel and accommodate rapid growth in demand."
The Zenius NFC Framework, Open-loop payment services and White-label applications are available today.
The NFC Framework makes it possible for payments, transportation, loyalty, access and identity providers to develop NFC applications rapidly for their entire customer base, and it easily supports multiple secure elements on virtually all mobile-phone platforms, according to the company.
Users of the suite will pay licensing fees that vary based on their business models and the extent of the company's software used, Wiese said in an interview. Volume and how a company makes money from the software also will play a role in the fees licensees pay, he said.
Zenius is both the provider and reseller of its software. The company is working with various hardware partners, including DeviceFidelity Inc., Wireless Dynamics Inc. and Giesecke & Devrient, Wiese said. It also is talking with makers of point of sale terminals, but Wiese was unable to name them.
Wiese said he believes the "tipping point has arrived" for NFC to emerge as an alternative to plastic-card payments.
In the next couple of years, the adoption rate could hit "the 10% range," he said.
"We've got these infrastructure builders doing NFC and spending hundreds of millions globally now," Wiese said.
"We're not on an upward curve of the hockey stick yet, but with the money being put behind this, it's moving at a rate faster than I thought it would," he said.
