Simpay was launched with much fanfare about 18 months ago, with the mission to start a Pan-European payments system for mobile phones. It was set up by a consortium of leading operators, mainly Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefónica Móviles.

The focus was micro-payments (less than Euro 10 or $12). I’m not sure why anyone would want to focus on one payment bracket, in the first place. I don’t think users think like "Oh, it’s a micropayment I’m looking to make and thus I’ll use my mobile phone in this instance, but I know that if it was $15, I’d use my MasterCard."

Once T-Mobile had dropped out, it looks as if the others have called it a day too. Their website has been taken down and now merely says:

Following the decision of one of its founding Members not to launch Simpay for the foreseeable future, the decision was made today at a General Meeting of Simpay not to pursue its activity on a pan-European scale as originally planned.

Instead, Simpay’s operations will be scaled back with immediate effect. Member operators will be able to exploit Simpay’s intellectual property rights at a national level, although international interoperability remains a goal. The members will make known their individual plans in due course.

This is an attempt at face saving, but can’t hide the fact that it’s been a failure on a grand scale.

Everyone involved is being tight-lipped about why it failed. But just trying to keep the shareholders happy and informed must have been an nearly impossible task. I’m also reminded that the camel is a horse designed by a committee.

In my view, the model that will bust into this billion dollar market will be led by entrepreneurs with a vision and a dollop of burning ambition, not a bunch of employees seconded to a co-ordinating body.

It’s a hot space, that’s now wide open. Banks don’t seem to want to play and operators seemingly can’t get it together. Who’s going to make a hell of a lot of money, then?

Story: The Register, who bizarrely didn’t seem to grok it was T-Mobile who had dropped out. They could have read it here a few weeks back.