MobilityWire

Kony Solutions, Inc., a mobile applications platform provider with Write Once, Run Everywhere technology, today announced the release of Kony Mobile Finance for Banking, a pre-packaged mobile application developed specifically for banks, savings and loans, and credit unions. Kony Mobile Finance applications enable companies to quickly launch and maintain a unique branded mobile offering that delivers a full-featured and secure mobile experience via native on-device applications, device-optimized mobile websites, and extensible clients such as SMS/MMS services and gadgets.

Using Kony Mobile Finance for Banking, companies can interact with their mobile customers, enabling them to view their bank and credit card balances and history, make transfers between their accounts, and pay their bills securely from their mobile phones. Customers can also check loyalty program information and review targeted, timely offers from their financial institutions as part of the application’s evolving mobile commerce capabilities.

Hosted and powered by the Kony Mobile Application Platform^TM, the Kony Mobile Finance for Banking application integrates with the institution’s current and future back-end systems (e.g., OFX, CRM), maximizing capabilities, efficiencies, and performance, all resulting in a superior customer experience and higher satisfaction. The Kony platform provides the critical mobile infrastructure to support large volumes of transactions, in a secure environment, despite the highly complex challenge of thousands of variations of mobile devices and functionality. Ultimately with Kony Mobile Finance for Banking, mobile customers can use any type of mobile phone to seamlessly interact with a financial institution’s existing commerce and information systems. With Kony, institutions deliver a rich, engaging mobile experience aligned with a firm’s overall marketing strategy, driving additional revenue and growing customer loyalty.

According to recent research from TowerGroup^[1], mobile banking usage is estimated to grow from 10 million active users in 2009 to over 53 million active users in 2013, representing a compound annual growth rate of 51.8 percent. Driven by consumers’ desire for real-time access to- and control of- their financial information, banks are rapidly looking for solutions to create a mobile banking channel quickly and cost-effectively.

“Banking customers have become increasingly mobile and there is a growing urgency for financial institutions to provide the desired customer service at all times. Mobile technologies present a powerful opportunity for institutions to differentiate themselves with immediate value, resulting in significant revenue opportunities,” said Raj Koneru, founder and CEO of Kony Solutions. “In partnership with the financial community, we have delivered Kony Mobile Finance for Banking to provide all customers a high-value banking experience, regardless of the mobile device they choose to use.”

Kony Mobile Finance for Banking Features

• Account information & summary
• Transaction details & activity
• Funds transfer
• Check deposits
• Bill payment
• Service requests
• Offers & special promotions
• Financial information – foreign currency exchange rates
• Mobile security – OFX compliance, SSL, multi-factor authentication

About Kony Solutions
Kony Solutions provides a mobile applications platform with Write Once, Run Everywhere technology that delivers mobile presence and commerce for consumer-facing enterprises. Delivering on the vision of mobile faster, better and with lower total cost of ownership, the Kony Mobile Application Platform uses a single-code base to develop rich native mobile applications, device-optimized mobile websites, and extensible clients (SMS/MMS/Gadgets). Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., the company also provides pre-built vertical applications which are customizable and ready to be deployed, hosted and managed via Kony 360 services. Visit www.konysolutions.com.

Tyfone, a global provider of mobile financial services infrastructure and fully-integrated mobile NFC payments/secure transaction capabilities, today announced the company was awarded a second patent for its innovations in smart card-based electronic wallet technology. This newest patent, US 7,581,678 is entitled “Electronic Transaction Card.”

Using time varying magnetic fields, Tyfone’s patented technology enables the use of a memory card as an electronic wallet and/or the ability to use that memory card for the secure transmission of financial information. This groundbreaking technology is used in the company’s u4ia^® (euphoria) Mobile Financial Services platform, which completed successful beta testing in June of this year.

In the growing contactless payment marketplace, Tyfone’s patented technologies and u4ia secure memory card platform enables a Trusted Service Manager (TSM) to bring scale to the ecosystem by enabling existing market deployed handsets to become NFC ready. This leads to significant benefits to consumers and the key stakeholders such as banks, transportation companies, mobile operators and merchants, without change to the current ecosystem and without incurring significant cost to enable it.

Unlike other software only technologies that refer to their application as an electronic wallet, Tyfone’s platform includes a neutral secure element-thereby making it a true electronic container or “wallet.” This solution allows a TSM to securely manage different consumer credit, debit, transportation and pre-paid accounts for use in a wide range of payment and other secure transactions.

A key application for Tyfone’s newly patented technology is using SideTapTM to conduct a contactless payment transaction. Using SideTap consumers purchase goods at point of sale simply by tapping their mobile device at point of sale.

“To Tyfone, this patent is the culmination of tireless work developing a neutral solution not only as a viable implementation of NFC that can be broadly used today, but also as a truly game changing technology,” said Dr. Siva Narendra, chief technology officer at Tyfone. “As was demonstrated when initial testing was completed with the key stakeholders in the NFC value chain, Tyfone’s newly patented technology brings us one step closer to a ubiquitous contactless payment reality. Tyfone’s secure memory card technology is out of the R&D lab, has been tried and tested and is ready for the next stage in evolving the stakeholders’ existing business models into new revenue opportunities.”

“Enabling near field communications without requiring design changes to the handset is the fastest way to proliferate contactless applications”, said Patrick Gauthier, who launched Visa Paywave and is now CEO of SMC Advisors, a management consulting firm focused on emerging payments, mobile and e-commerce businesses. “Tyfone’s technology is critical to jump start NFC by providing a packaging that is familiar to the consumers, delivering a neutral secure element that is appropriate for banks and service providers, and enabling a new class of use cases that can drive revenue for operators.”

About Tyfone:
Tyfone connects money and mobility via a highly secure, scalable and flexible Mobile Financial Services (MFS) infrastructure that is tailored to meet the evolving needs of mobile network operators, transportation agencies, retailers and financial institutions. With its complete MFS platform and global alliance partners, Tyfone is uniquely qualified to deliver issuer-centric turnkey solutions with fully-integrated contactless payments capabilities. To discover why Tyfone is becoming the partner of choice for MFS technologies to many of the world’s leading organizations, please visit www.tyfone.com.

Tyfone, a global provider of mobile financial services infrastructure and fully-integrated mobile payments capabilities, today announced that OnPoint Community Credit Union, Oregon’s largest credit union with more than $2.8 billion in assets, has selected Tyfone’s u4ia^® platform as the infrastructure behind its mobile banking strategy. OnPoint will leverage Tyfone’s professional services to deploy robust mobile banking services initially, with NFC contactless mobile payment capabilities to follow.

Founded in Portland, Oregon in 1932 by 16 school teachers, OnPoint has grown and evolved into a full-service institution serving close to 200,000 members. In support of its mission to provide unsurpassed member access to services, OnPoint has consistently expanded its reach through new branch openings, online banking and bill payment and growth in its ATM network. Earlier this year, OnPoint made a commitment to further increase accessibility through an aggressive mobile banking strategy.

“We set out to find a proven technology partner offering a full suite of mobile banking capabilities, plus we wanted a flexible, modular architecture and experienced professional services to help us implement our strategy,” said Jim Armstrong, OnPoint’s senior vice president of technology. “Tyfone came through with a comprehensive platform that exceeded our requirements, but their integrated NFC contactless mobile payment capabilities were what really sold us. No other vendor on the market offers both capabilities, and Tyfone’s unique secure memory card technology gives us exceptional flexibility to deliver some very exciting new member services down the road.”

According to the research firm Juniper Research, by the year 2011 there will be over $587 billion in financial transactions handled by mobile financial services around the world.

While the current industry paradigm for implementing mobile payments relies on wireless operators and handset manufacturers to integrate Near-Field Communications (NFC) chips into new handset models, Tyfone’s unique technology overcomes this barrier by integrating the Secure Element (SE), an NFC contactless chip and antenna on standard Secure Digital (SD) memory cards. Using a secure memory card as the SE fosters a better operator – bank cooperation, allowing memory card-enabled phones to become instantly capable of highly secure transactions and contactless payments.

Manufacturers are gearing up for widespread adoption of mobile payments. As of 2009, over 60 percent of phones in the US have memory card slots and close to one billion phones worldwide, thereby Tyfone’s solution makes it simple for customers to adopt and provide organizations the opportunity to brand their own cards.

“OnPoint recognizes that offering their members mobile financial solutions is a critical strategy to build on their preeminent position in the marketplace,” said Thomas Spitzer, Tyfone’s chief executive officer. “Being able to offer everything from secure mobile banking to mobile payments will enable us to partner with them for the long term.”

About Tyfone:
Tyfone connects money and mobility via a highly secure, scalable and flexible Mobile Financial Services (MFS) infrastructure that is tailored to meet the evolving needs of mobile network operators, transportation agencies, retailers and financial institutions. With its complete MFS platform and global alliance partners, Tyfone is uniquely qualified to deliver issuer-centric turnkey solutions with fully-integrated contactless payments capabilities. To discover why Tyfone is becoming the partner of choice for MFS technologies to many of the world’s leading organizations, please visit www.tyfone.com.

About OnPoint Community Credit Union:
OnPoint Community Credit Union is the largest credit union in Oregon, serving more than 199,000 members and with assets of $2.8 billion. Founded in 1932, OnPoint Community Credit Union’s membership is available to anyone who lives or works in one of 10 Oregon counties (Benton, Clackamas, Columbia, Lane, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, Polk, Washington and Yamhill) and two Washington counties (Skamania and Clark). For more information visit www.onpointcu.com or call 800-527-3932.