Accepting Any Payment, From Anywhere, Across The Universe?

With the power of mobile sales technology and solutions, consumers and merchants can now make and accept payments from across the room or across an ocean. These solutions are often universal, where consumers in different countries, using different currencies, can seamlessly and quickly exchange funds.

Mosambee is one company betting on the universal nature of mobile payments, as it recently expanded its mPOS system into the United States. The company, which served India and other nearby countries prior to the expansion, offers an mPOS device that can accept almost any form of payment via a card reader and Bluetooth connectivity. It also works as a mobile wallet, called Mosambee.Cash.

PYMNTS recently caught up with Alok Arora, CEO of Mosambee, to discuss the challenges of building and maintaining an international mobile payments system and what he sees in the industry’s future. Arora said the company hopes to carve its own space in the U.S. mPOS market alongside major players in the industry, rather than competing directly against them.

“We’re not competing with the large processors,” Arora explained. “We intend to make all forms of payment available to everyone. We don’t want merchants to have to lose money because they could not accept a certain form of payment.”

Building A Successful Solution In India

Arora said that, when he and his team set out to build a mobile payments solution, they wanted to be sure it would be truly universal. To do so, they ensured it can accept and adjust to new forms of payment, even those that are still in development.

“The solution is open in that it can adapt and add more methods of payment,” Arora explained. “The whole idea is that the merchants need not lose a transaction just because the customer wants to pay using a new method or one not supported by [our] solution. So, we support all forms of payment.”

To accept such a broad range of payment options, including credit and debit cards, mobile and prepaid wallets and Indian payment methods, such as IMPS, Arora and his team have sought to form partnerships with card providers. These partnerships, he said, are essential to the company’s engagement model.

Mosambee has collaborated with more than a dozen different partners, including industry leaders, like Mastercard and American Express. The company formed an exclusive partnership with Visa when it became the only mPOS provider in India to establish a direct card processing connection with the credit card company.

Mosambee has built a strong customer base, with more than 24,000 merchants in India, making it one of the largest mPOS providers in the country. The company also is faring well in Qatar and Mauritius, Arora said.

Coming To America

After finding success in India, Arora and his team decided to bring their universal payment acceptance solution to the U.S.

While he acknowledged there were some differences between the U.S. and Indian markets, Arora said the company intends to provide primarily the same service that it does in India. It will offer American merchants a technology-based platform that allows companies to accept a wide range of payment options without being forced to pay high processing fees or invest in multiple solutions.

Arora also said that the mobile payments space in the U.S. is already crowded, with major successful players, such as PayPal and Venmo. But rather than try to compete with these big-name solutions that have already established a significant market share in the U.S., Mosambee plans to differentiate itself in the industry by looking to carve out its own customer space.

Mosambee aims to provide a ready-to-use platform that should cost only about 60 percent of what it would cost to work with another local provider, according to Arora.

The company is currently in talks with large American payment processors, including Worldpay, PayPal and Global Payments, among others, Arora said, to expand their network of partners. He added that the company, guided by its expansion mission, has plans to expand further into Asia and Africa.

What’s Next?

The future of mPOS systems may look like the universal solution Mosambee is developing. For his part, Arora predicts that more companies likely will soon support nearly all forms of payments to help merchants make as many sales as possible.

Eventually, the leaders in the space will not be those that develop the most cutting-edge or exciting new technology, Arora said, because more companies will accept a wide range of payment types. Rather, those that can provide a wide range of payment acceptance options may be the ones to wind up on top.

“In less than three years, everybody will be accepting everything,” he said. “Innovation has been the differentiator in the space, but it won’t remain that way for too long. Look at what happened in the IT field. There was a time when it was a differentiator, but today, that isn’t the case.”

Universality — coming to the planet you’re on … soon.

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