mPayy: A credit card slayer? In-depth look

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This post was republished from Rackspace’s Building43.

The world of payments is changing, but not without a fight. In the future you won’t pull out your Visa or MasterCard; instead, you’ll pull out your cellphone or a card you can swipe on a sensor. One company making that future a reality is mPayy.

So why can’t we pay our bills via our phones yet? Why does everything still involve our credit cards?

“It’s a business model issue,” says Conrad Sheehan, founder, president and CEO of mPayy, an alternative electronic payment system. “We see the mobile carrier as being an emergent dominant relationship you have in your life. But ‘business model’ is sometimes code for ‘who’s going to make money?’ In the world of payments, it’s a fixed pie. Something has to give. There’s a world of issuing banks, a world of acquiring banks, and then there’s Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover in the middle: the three-person party. How do you get a wireless carrier in there? Then, by extension, the OEM—the phone manufacturer? They’ve got to make money in order for this to work.”

Amid these major forces, mPayy’s strategy is to “come in at a right angle”: building software for a payment system focusing on purchases too small to pay with plastic, or utility bills, where you might have to pay extra to use a credit card.

In Sheehan’s view, the current design of credit cards is something we’d change completely, if we could have a do-over. “They were built for an offline, mechanical world. That’s why the numbers are raised: the financial data is sitting right on the card. You could be blind and still get it. This hasn’t changed one bit, in light of the ubiquitous world of the internet: it’s still the same exact product. If you were to do a new one, you would never put sensitive financial data in plain text on a card.”

More info:
mPayy web site: https://www.mpayy.com/
mPayy on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mpayy
mPayy profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mpayy

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Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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8 thoughts on “mPayy: A credit card slayer? In-depth look”

  2. I don’t think most people even care who makes this happen or how. One thing I want is paperless receipts. In fact, I want my phone to pay for fuel while my car stores the receipt, and NFC probably makes that possible “real soon now”. Either phone or car should then send details to where ever I keep my records, maybe something like Quicken “in the cloud”, and not just purchases but trip data, mileage records, and so on.

    (BTW, I can’t get the video to work – might be just me)

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    1. Hey Bob. Couldn’t agree more. Paperless receipts are the way forward. That’s why we founded yReceipts. Here is a bit more about us blog.yreceipts.com or just yreceipts.com.

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  3. Paperless receipts are so great! A lot of retailers (Best Buy, Apple… well at least two large ones) don’t even need you to have the receipt. Just having an email placeholder is fine for your own records.

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  4. I don’t think most people even care who makes this happen or how. One thing I want is paperless receipts. In fact, I want my phone to pay for fuel while my car stores the receipt, and NFC probably makes that possible “real soon now”.

    Like

  5. Nice information.And now a days there are a lot of facilities offering by different banks so that to increase the user rate.And recently military credit cards are offering the best facilities.The best thing about this card is it automatically pays you the rewards in your account monthly without the usual $50 minimum like most credit cards.

    Like

  6. Nice information.And now a days there are a lot of facilities offering by different banks so that to increase the user rate.And recently military credit cards are offering the best facilities.The best thing about this card is it automatically pays you the rewards in your account monthly without the usual $50 minimum like most credit cards.

    Like

  7. Nice information.And now a days there are a lot of facilities offering by different banks so that to increase the user rate.And recently military credit cards are offering the best facilities.The best thing about this card is it automatically pays you the rewards in your account monthly without the usual $50 minimum like most credit cards.

    Like

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