TORONTO, ONTARIO — (MARKET WIRE) — 01/09/08 — Silverback Media (PLUS: SBMP)(FRANKFURT: SVD), a mobile marketing advertising agency with operations in North America and Europe, has entered in a new three year partnership with Toronto-based Puretracks Inc (“Puretracks”), a North American digital music provider (the “Partnership”). The Partnership intends to offer a one stop shop to companies interested in incorporating both digital music and mobile content into their business-to-consumer promotions.
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Few payment innovations have produced the stark schizophrenia that we are experiencing with mobile commerce. Normally somber business types are rubbing their hands together at the prospects of reaching consumers on a one-to-one basis, online, all the time, anywhere they happen to be. Meanwhile, typically apprehensive risk managers and security experts are wringing their hands at the potential for serious data incursions. Maybe risk managers know that, as often happens with payment innovations, the temptation is to get the new product into the marketplace as quickly as possible, then step up the security as needed to ward off attacks. One case in point could now be emerging among so-called smart phones, where the underlying programming is proving to be more vulnerable to hackers than some business types thought.
Mobile commerce, however, raises the stakes for this risky self-indulgence because many observers are projecting that cell phones and PDAs will soon replace wallets and pocketbooks. Consumers, who almost never leave home without their mobile devices, are being prepared for the day when all the payment and loyalty information they need will be loaded on and/or accessed by the device. So a data incursion, should it happen, could be just as damaging as losing a wallet or pocketbook. Maybe more so, if the mobile device’s ability to authenticate the consumer is hacked.
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Google Inc. has filed a patent that would allow users to pay for goods from vending machines and retailers — as well as make larger payments — via text message, or SMS (short message service) technology.
U.S. Patent 2007/0203836, called “Text message payment,” was published last Thursday by Google engineer Ramy Dodin. The invention, dubbed Gpay in the supporting drawings, is described as “a computer-implemented method of effectuating a payment, comprising: receiving at a computer server system a text message from a payor containing a payment request comprising a payment amount sent by a payor device operating independently of the computer server system; debiting a payor account for an amount corresponding to the amount of the payment request; and crediting a payee account that is independent of the computer server system.”
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