American Express Partners PayFone

• American Express associated in the last 19 million dollars funding round in the capital of the New-York-based PayFone. This new company provides m-payment services for face-to-face transactions as well as mobile payment applications. The customer pays for physical or virtual goods using his mobile phone number.
• PayFone also provides authorisation and payment services to American Express digital payment platform Serve, recently launched by the T&E cards scheme. This partnership enables the customer to link his mobile phone number to several payment methods. He can also initiate P2P transfers.
• Funds raised will provide for an expansion outside of the United-States. American Express is the largest strategic investor; among these are also Verizon and Rogers Communications, which joined Opus Capital, BlackBerry Partners Fund and RRE Ventures.

• American Express wants to go beyond its original market of plastic credit cardholders, which represents a potential of two billion banked people around the world. Its mobile payment strategy now targets the five billion mobile phone owners worldwide. This strategic partnership with PayFone provides an international dimension to its Serve offer (based on the former “Revolution Money P2P” platform acquired in 2010).
• This development plan goes along with the increasing possibility to sell goods online. Payment collection can now be performed by just anyone through solutions such as proposed by Square or PayPal. Nevertheless, in the traditional card industry, face-to-face acceptance of electronic payment remains possible only to established merchants, i.e. commercial entrepreneurs.

See March 2011 Watch