THE global trend toward customers using their mobile phone to make purchase payments will continue to see strong growth, according to New Zealand mobile payment specialist GFG Group.

Newly-appointed GFG Group chief executive Grant Halverson, a former regional director for financial services giant Citibank, says the global payments market was still growing rapidly, although it had become more fragmented. Halverson said GFG Group was well positioned to take a big chunk of the mobile payments sector, one of the fastest growing areas of the payments market. GFG's software lets payments be made securely from mobile phone in the same way as a credit card or or EFTPOS card. The software was originally developed for a mobile phone company in the Philippines – Smart Communications – and is now being sold into other country markets. Vodafone New Zealand acquired the software for its first entre into electronic mobile payments. The Vodafone Hotlink service lets its customers use their phone to top up prepaid or account balances directly from a their bank account. The company has more recently made a multi-million dollar sale to a consortium of North American telecommunications companies, and it is in the process of negotiating sales with telco’s in the Middle East, India and other parts of Asia. What makes the GFG Group software interesting is the way it has converged its breakthrough mobile technology with its established cards-based payment management software. The combination of the two in effect creates a virtual bank account operated by mobile phone. The technology has created huge interest in the retail sector and among telco’s. And in the developing economies with not much of a fixed line phone network and low use of bank accounts, the system gives people access to the bank-level payments capabilities through thee phone. “Having a Java-based Card product is critical because that means speed to market for new products,” Halverson said. “Likewise a proven mobile payments product is critical, because mobile payments is probably the largest single new growth opportunity in the global payments market – particularly outside the developed countries.” “The paradox is that it’s really only a smaller player such as GFG which can be sufficiently fast moving and innovative and can be in the right place at the right time with the right products. And that’s key to why GFG is such an exciting opportunity,” he said.