The Mobile Payment Forum today announced additions to its
leadership team, including three new members of the board of directors and a new steering group chair, following a significant year for the organization. Created in November 2001, the Mobile Payment Forum is still the only global, cross-industry alliance of leading organizations from the mobile and financial industries dedicated the advancement of mobile  (m) commerce. The Forum focuses its efforts on standardizing the features and functions needed to deploy secure and convenient mobile commerce solutions.

The twelve-seat board now includes NEC Corporation, Nokia Corporation and T-Moble  International. In addition to NEC, Nokia and T-Mobile, the board is comprised of  representatives from 3, American Express Company, JCB Co., Ltd., MasterCard International,  NTT DoCoMo, Oracle, Telecom Italia Mobile, Visa International  and Vodafone. As illustrated by the board of directors, the Mobile Payment Forum has attracted key organizations from various market segments within the industry - including handset manufacturers, payment companies, mobile operators and technology companies - to its membership.

The Mobile Payment Forum has also appointed Alessandra Dell’Otti, Vodafone, as steering group chair for the organization. The steering group is responsible for the review and approval of all technical activities of the Mobile Payment Forum, as determined by the  board of directors, including overseeing the Forum’s three working groups.

“The Mobile Payment Forum’s working groups have made impressive progress on best practices  and requirements for download mechanisms, secure two-way messaging, and form fill technologies,” said Dell’Otti. “In the next year, we’ll work to finalize those deliverables, and continue to work on the issues our members have identified as top priorities - a global interface specification and third-party authentication - as we strive to further enable secure mobile payments.”

Over the past year, the Mobile Payment Forum has completed work on several deliverables,  including an architectural framework document for its members, which provides a context for  the Forum’s working group activities and a set of base use-cases. The Mobile Payment Forum  also recently produced a non-technical white paper with an overview of the Forum’s activities and business impact on the mobile payment industry.

“As a member driven organization, the Mobile Payment Forum seeks to address the requirements of both the mobile and financial industries while accommodating consumer and
merchant needs for convenience, choice and security in m-payments,” said Tom Manessis, co-president, Mobile Payment Forum. “As we enter our second year, we will continue to focus
on the opportunities and the challenges facing the industry for mobile commerce, andcontinue to work with other standards bodies to minimize redundancy in work efforts and ensure broad cooperation on non-competitive issues.”

Membership is tiered, allowing interested parties to join as either Principal or Associate members. Any organization with an interest in facilitating secure m-commerce is eligible to
join.

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