Canadian Mobile Ops Plan Summer 2012 Mobile Payments Launch

Rogers, Bell Canada and Telus Corp. are reported to be in final talks to adopt a mobile payment platform, using the moniker EnStream, working with banks, by about mid-2012. The payment platform will ensure that retailers and banks have one unified system to work with, not three separate mobile systems.  

Canada’s banking industry seems poised to adopt new voluntary guidelines agreed upon by the banking industry, to work with Enstream. Those standards were agreed upon by the country’s largest banks at a meeting of the Canadian Bankers Association, and will set out rules for “how banks will operate in this new world,” The Globe and Mail reports. 


The voluntary guidelines, technically known as the "Mobile Reference Model," will serve as a blueprint for how mobile payment capabilities can be offered in the Canadian market, including guidelines around how information is exchanged among various parties to a transaction including financial institutions, payment card companies, telecommunications companies and merchants. 


While voluntary, the financial institutions that developed the guidelines are committed to these principles in the mobile market, and these guidelines are intended to create a path to help all market participants move forward in developing mobile payment solutions. 



Canada already has more mobile-ready contactless readers per capita than anywhere else in the world, with this type of reader installed in between 12 and 15 percent of all retail outlets, according to Almis Ledas, chief operating officer of EnStream.



The proposed business model will entail payment of flat annual fees to banks, allowing them to load a consumer's financial credentials on the subscriber information module inside a device enabled with near field communications.



That would allow the phone to replace a debit or credit card, but would not offer the phone company a cut of any transaction made using smart phones.