mGage and Oxfam successfully launch world-first RCS mobile payment campaign

In an exciting milestone for the charities sector, mGage, in partnership with Oxfam GB, has deployed its next-generation Rich Communication Services (RCS) mobile payment solution, to encourage more donations and higher levels of engagement.

At a time when charities are struggling amidst the pandemic, this world-first campaign is supporting Oxfam with its vital work worldwide, fighting poverty and assisting victims of humanitarian crises. With positive results when compared to a standard Premium SMS send , this channel is proving to be more popular than traditional card payments, offering a unique opportunity for charities to boost revenue, whilst deepening the relationship with supporters.

“With a simplified payment flow, a donation amount can be selected at the click of a button and added to the mobile bill, providing a truly seamless experience. This solution really is a gamechanger, especially at a time when so many charities need our support,” said Nick Millward, Vice President Europe at mGage. “RCS payments provide the ultimate convenience and an appealing experience for customers, who increasingly want organisations to contact them via mobile messaging. With more than 1.31 billion mobile payment users expected by 2023, it is a service that is soaring in popularity.”

Additionally, the service’s Verified Sender feature offers absolute peace of mind and builds trust between both charities and supporters. Accompanied by branding, users can be assured that a message sent to them is legitimate, protecting against fraud and the reputation of the sender.

“We are engaging with our supporters in a completely new way thanks to this innovative rich messaging channel, which allows for more choice and tailored, flexible content embedded directly into mobile messages,” said Drew Hickling, Supplier Relationship Manager, at Oxfam GB. “Working with mGage we have created an RCS and Mobile Billing flow that provides a simple and seamless experience for our supporters with increased levels of potential engagement.” 

Watch the video interview with Oxfam and mGage on YouTube – “Oxfam GB & mGage Successfully Launch World First RCS & Mobile Payments Campaign

Juniper Research recognizes Evina as the gold winner in Security and Fraud Innovation

Evina, the leading specialist in cybersecurity for mobile payment has received the gold award in the Security and Fraud Innovation category at The Future Digital Awards by Juniper Research, the top analyst firm in the mobile and digital tech sector.

This award is the result of Evina’s cutting-edge technology – above all industry standards – that allows mobile network operators, payment gateways, and merchants to fend off fraud and increase their revenue while doing so.

This recognition highlights the crucial role Evina’s cutting-edge technology plays in securing markets. David Lotfi, CEO of Evina says “At Evina, our mission isn’t to only stop fraud, we strive to create a healthier ecosystem that unlocks more efficient payment flows and new business opportunities for all market players.”

Evina’s gold win shines a light on what the future of cybersecurity holds. The anti-fraud market can no longer function without high-tech tools that know how to differentiate between bots or humans.

Evina has dedicated more than 15 years to develop the most advanced cybersecurity technology for mobile payment. Evina offers an ultrahigh definition 3D footprint that captures online fraudulent behaviour, edge computing that treats and stores data closest to the end user, and a global money honeypot network in more than 70 countries that attracts fraudsters and reverse-engineers their mechanisms. The innovation doesn’t stop there. The Cyber Threat Intelligence analyzes threats coming from all sources, including the dark web, and the machine learning is continuously fed with over 16 million transactions analyzed every day.

The cutting-edge technology allows to detect 99.8% of fraudulent transactions, decrease complaint rates, and increase the number of legitimate transactions. Evina’s passionate team of engineers and extensive database are what make the cybersecurity firm the best anti-fraud tool on the market. This award demonstrates that Evina has become a major international player, alongside long-standing Juniper award winners such Microsoft, Paypal, and Amazon, in the cybersecurity anti-fraud realm.

Sam Media earns the Malaysia International Business Awards for Telecommunications

The company is using data science to prevent fraud in Direct Carrier Billing.

Sam Media won in the Telecommunications category of the Malaysia International Business Awards 2020, which honours exceptional international businesses based in Malaysia.

The company connects the world to premium digital services. Sam Media develops apps and browser-based digital products, like e-learning software and interactive entertainment portals. Together with monitoring partners like the French company Evina (https://www.evina.com), they are one of the pioneers in the fight against carrier billing fraud.

As a leader in innovation, it is the company’s mission to make digital products accessible to everybody on any device type. They are also growing their reach by using alternative payment solutions like carrier billing, so their suite of products can be enjoyed by all users, even those who don’t have access to traditional payment methods, such as bank accounts or credit cards.

Sam Media boasts in unlocking new markets with alternative payment methods and multi-platform compatibility. Their experienced media buy team knows how to reach millions of consumers, whilst having a strong focus on data science to improve user experience and to track down fraudulent activities.

In 2018, the company started recruiting data scientists to its Malaysian office, focusing on the analysis of consumer behavior in order to improve users’ experience within its digital products. Now, Sam Media’s data science team has picked up on another great challenge in monitoring transacties and marketing activities.

As with any payment method, fraud remains a constant companion and a source of concern.

Wherever transactions and billing are happening on a larger scale, there’s a growing likelihood that fraudsters will attempt to take a piece of the pie. Carrier billing has been no exception.

Recognizing this, the company looked for external solutions to protect its business. However, they noticed that trusting exclusively external anti-fraud solutions only gives a false sense of security. Thus, their Malaysian data science team started to connect all the dots, combining the data of the external anti-fraud solutions with the firm’s own data to better protect users.

In the past years, Sam Media has been developing its own analytical tools to get ahead of what the industry requires. Their tools are being updated and altered continuously based on the requirements in the market, whilst their data science team sets ambitious goals to keep innovating.

Alexis Bartels, CEO of Sam Media, responds to winning this award: As a company, we have a recognition and reward culture, so we are extremely happy with this award. All credit to our data science team. I am very proud of our people.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sam-media.

Evina: The DCB Story and Proximus Case Study

Article written by Evina

THE DCB STORY HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW

Mobile operators the world over will recognise the beginning of the story we outline below. Few, however, ever pay attention to how it ends. Let’s begin…

Our story starts in those early, euphoric days of Direct Carrier Billing. Back then, DCB seemed to be the ideal business opportunity for cash-hungry Mobile Network Operators experiencing the effects of declining Average Revenue Per User.

DCB appeared easy to implement, with high margins, and was very much in demand by merchants for its high acquisition rates. Suddenly, mobile operators were payment operators and the sky seemed to be the limit.

Unfortunately, the rash of consumer complaints that followed this honeymoon period very quickly exploded the payments bubble. Anxious to preserve their image and tired of dealing with complaints, the MNOs saw no choice but to severely restrict the use of DCB.

Now this is where many operators believe the story ends and that’s a real tragedy. DCB is far from just another empty pot of gold in a long list of mobile mirages.

Testimony to this is the fact that some forward-thinking MNOs recognised DCB for the promising mobile opportunity that it remained and decided to see where they could go with it.

These innovators blazed a trail and reaped the rewards. Their experiments with refining DCB saw their complaint rates collapse and their revenues increase sharply. We saw this with Proximus in Belgium and Bouygues in France. So, what happened and how did they do it?

Firstly, these operators clearly identified the problem which is the proper starting point in successfully overcoming any challenge. They realised that high complaint rates were not, most of the time, due to dishonest merchants or payment aggregators fleecing an efficient payment system.

Quite the opposite. It turned out that merchants and aggregators were likewise the victims of massive fraud. While fraud is to be expected in any monetary system, the good news is that it is not an insurmountable problem. It can be managed in DCB, just as it is managed in the credit card ecosystem.

Secondly, successful MNOs like the two mentioned above recognise that only fraud experts can beat fraudsters. And we’re not talking about just any, run-of-the-mill experts. Too many generalist companies sell what should be anti-fraud solutions offered by specialists. Even fraudsters sell anti-fraud solutions. Clearly, this is untenable.

In order to be properly secured, MNOs need to be protected by a specialist anti-fraud expert that meets three essential criteria:
·      Independence – The solution cannot belong to an advertiser so there is never any doubt as to why a transaction is validated or refused.
·      Cybersecurity focus – Too many players in the sector are unable to do all the services they provide equally well.
·      Expertise in fraud – The world of mobile payment fraud is a unique environment that requires specific expertise that can only be the result of extended practical experience and serious R&D.

By collaborating with Evina, Proximus and Bouygues soon realised their new specialist anti-fraud provider ticked all the boxes above. The result was that, for them, DCB became the wonderful opportunity it was meant to be from the very beginning.

To explain to all operators how to take full advantage of DCB, and make it a source of substantial profit, we have just published a case study detailing our collaboration with Proximus, including a study of the impact on their revenues and their complaint rate.

It can be freely downloaded here: https://docs.evina.com/case-study-proximus-x-evina

This case study reinforces one of our strongest convictions: by approaching fraud in the right way, DCB can be transformed from the payment method of the past to that of the future.