I posted yesterday in one of my occasional “Advice to Operators pieces” that they should all introduce a system to allow P2P transfers of prepay phone credits.
These pieces are deliberately presented from the “in a perfect world” point of view and don’t take account of many of the complexities of running a mobile operator and the technical realisations of some of the ideas. I try to look at the forest and not the trees, in other words.
But, Simon Cavill, CTO of Mi-Pay left a comment saying that his company supplies this very technology to mobile operators, among other services.
So, why aren’t operators getting killed in the rush to use their services? They seem to have a heavy-weight team, lots of experience and some serious partnerships in place.
So if you work for an operator, you should talk to them, at least. There’s money to be made here that’s leaking like a sieve, with extra holes banged in it.
On the other hand, being completely incapable of not giving advice, I would say that their website doesn’t do them any favours in presenting their services. You really have to sift through it and drill down to stand a chance of discovering what they do.
Please let’s have less jargon, more benefits (not features) of your services and get straight to the point. If I’m a busy and stressed operator, I want to know within 5 seconds of hitting this site what you can do for me and how that’ll help my company.
The home page just says:
In a groundbreaking marketplace, Mi-Pay has partnered with established leaders to offer consultancy and managed services that deliver unbeatable cost reductions for prepaid services such as mobile top up and e-money account re-charging.
Mobile operators, e-money providers, WIFI operators and even transport companies can all benefit from Mi-Pay’s services today.
“So they’re a cost-reduction consultancy maybe? Or certainly a consultancy of some kind. I don’t have a budget for consulting. Nah. I’m in the wrong place - I was looking for a funky P2P mobile credits transfer system.”
So, Simon, good luck with your venture - it looks very exciting, but not the way you tell it 
Maybe an experienced marketing person could usefully be added to that brilliant exec line up?
What you said in your previous article is pretty right especially when you talk about usability, transaction time, security, number of affiliates, etc.
I know pretty well your “chicken and egg” problem having spent many years developping business for the services vouchers activity where the problematic is very close.
Regarding mobile payment, I joined CRANDY because all constraints you mention are solved and the USP is pretty good.
The mobile to mobile payments exists with CRANDY.
CRANDY is a true banking acccount based on the mobile (or fixe line). The registration is just one call to Crandy, you can than load your account on street with your credit card, by cash, scratchcard, or at home with a bank transfer, direct debit, check…like a standard bank account and more.
You can therefore transfer money in real time (not only your phone credit but real money) whereever you are to any kind of phone with all operators. CRANDY allows you also to pay in few seconds on a vending machine, on POS, on Internet or download virtual content. This is the only payment mean that cover the 5 type of payment : people, machine, cashregister, Internet and virtual. You can also receive coupons and vouchers from merchants that are directly credited to your account and pay with it.
The technology is call by call, SMS, Java or RFID according the wishes of the merchants.
For one year CRANDY is probably one of the few project truly operational, having more than 200 000 customers in Germany and now starting in France. CRANDY has opened several services like: vending, on street parking, prepaid top up, music download, fast food, e-ticket transport, cheaper SMS and calls, virtual gift cards…
As you can imagine the development is very fast due to the viral free P2P payment methods.
Philippe Lerouge
Associate director - Crandy