What are Mobile Payments?

There is a whole range of different types of mobile payment services including WAP, SMS, QR Codes, NFC and mBanking. Below is a breakdown of each of these mobile payment services:

SMS Payments: You send a payment request via SMS and a charge is applied to your phone bill. The merchant is informed of the charge and then releases the goods, which are most often digital (i.e. music, ringtones, apps etc.). In some cases an MMS message containing a QR barcode is delivered to you and scanned by the merchant for payment confirmation (i.e. electronic ticketing). This type of payment is often used for charity donations as well. .

Mobile Web Payments (WAP): This is just shopping on a mobile website or regular website through your mobile phone browser. You enter your credit card and mailing information onto the website to pay for your desired products or services much in the same way as you would on your PC or laptop.

QR Code: Payment by QR Codes is a fast and efficient contact payment solution via Smart Phones. The user scans a QR barcode using the QR Pal application to complete a payment transaction.

Near Field Communications (Contactless NFC): An NFC enabled phone contains a radio frequency ID (RFID) chip or NFC technology, which communicates with the merchant's terminal allowing transactions to be triggered wirelessly. NFC Payments are currently limited to $15 without entering a PIN.

mBanking: It is now possible to make payments and transfers via online banking and banking applications on your mobile phone.

Source: http://www.qrpay.com/payments

Which mobile payment allows

4. paying through your mobile phone browser;

5. wireless transactions with the merchant's terminal;

6. paying via SMS;

7. paying via online banking;

8. paying by scanning a QR code

1.2. Mobile banking is a system that allows customers of a financial institution to conduct a number of financial transactions through a mobile device such as a mobile phone or personal digital assistant.

The earliest mobile banking services were offered over SMS, a service known as SMS banking. With the introduction of smart phones enabling the use of the mobile web in 1999, the first European banks started to offer mobile banking on this platform to their customers.

Mobile banking have led to increasing use of special client programs, called apps, downloaded to the mobile device. With that said, advancements in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript have seen more banks launching mobile web based services to complement native applications. A recent study (May 2012) by Mapa Research suggests that over a third of banks have mobile device detection upon visiting the banks' main website. A number of things can happen on mobile detection such as redirecting to an app store, redirection to a mobile banking specific website or providing a menu of mobile banking options for the user to choose from.

Answer the questions:

1. What is mobile banking?

2. When did SMS banking appear?

3. What can mobile device detection mean?