OREANDA-NEWS. March 17, 2009. In Moscow with the assistance of Infocommunication Union the Round-table Discussion “Mobile payments – today”, organized by the CyberPlat® company took place. A member of financial market committee of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russian Federation and a member of the National Banking Board of the Bank of Russia, president of “Russia” Association Dr. Anatoly G. Aksakov, First Executive Vice-President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and Chairman of the Board in the “Russia” Association Mr. Alexander V. Murychev, President of Infocommunication Union Alexander E. Krupnov, representatives of the Infocommunication Union member organizations, including all leading mobile network operators in Russia took part in the discussion.

The CyberPlat® company offered the round-table participants to consider its technological solution of the mobile payments system, representing a model of practical implementation of the Universal Payment Platform (UPP) Concept, developed by the Infocommunication Union and approved by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation in 2008. This system is uniform for all market players including mobile network operators, retail networks and banks. It integrates their interests and allows forming a new business model of mobile commerce.

The main principles of the given system of mobile payments are a full compliance with the existing banking legislation, maximum consideration of interests of the mobile network operators and Russian banks and an effective utilization of the widespread payment infrastructure existing in Russia. The use of open formats, protocols and gateways provides all system participants with a possibility of fast connection with the retention of the earlier made investments and the low cost and guaranteed security of transactions, scalability, high reliability and productivity serve as favorable preconditions for the wide spreading of mobile payments among the entire population of the country.

The suggested model of implementing the UPP is appealing to all market players. From the point of view of mobile network operators it means increasing the volume of funds on the subscribers’ accounts, additional revenue received from transaction fees and growth of the data transmission traffic, enhanced range of the rendered services. In addition, all settlements can be carried out directly through a bridge-bank providing services to a specific operator.

Using this system in the retails networks will allow involving new "hi-tech" customers and lowering the volume of debt burden thanks to the rapid funds turnover. The absence of recovery costs or acquiring costs cuts down operational costs.

Connecting banks to the offered model of mobile payments will raise the appeal of their products to retail clients owing to expanding the range of rendered services, promotes growth of bank liquidity due to increasing the balance on the clients’ settlement accounts, and increases their commission income.

Wide application of the developed system of mobile payments enables solving national problems on reduction of cash circulation, ensuring the availability of financial services for broad layers of population and promotes increase of a transparency of calculations in the retail trade. “When liquidity crisis takes place, the money supply is insufficient for the process of the GDP production. The model developed by our company solves this macroeconomic problem at the expense of the mass use of the system of mobile payments, allowing to increase considerably the money velocity in the country,”  — Andrey Gribov, CEO of CyberPlat OJSC, stated.

In his speech A.G. Aksakov specified that systems of mobile payments enabling secure and convenient access to the bank account are quite promising in our country considering its big extent and lack of developed infrastructure in provinces. Implementing domestic developments is rather important in the business of creation of payment systems – it ensures informational independency and security of the country. “The issue of creating a uniform national system of mobile payments is not the mater of big investments. The solution lies in the organizational plane – in the sphere of coordinating the formats, operation regulations, overcoming the interdepartmental barriers,”- the President of Association of Regional Banks of Russia emphasized.

A.V.Murychev, in his turn, stated that in the context of the current financial crisis one ought to welcome any measures promoting the acceleration of capital turnover which increase the volume of mobile payments. Interaction of banks, mobile network operators, and retail business in forming the new settlement instruments should encourage the business dealings activity, consumer demand, and, consequently - the output. What CyberPlat company has to offer, may become an effective remedy of the kind.

In his closing speech, the Chairman of the Round-table Discussion, A.E.Krupnov, stated that “wide introduction of the considered model of implementation of UPP will undoubtedly promote development of the market of new generation services and may become a good foundation for fruitful joint work of its players.”