Page 126 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Technology, innovation and competition

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Technology, Innovation and Competition

Mastercard. Each DFS stored value account is associated with a real or virtual card in the wallet management
and tokenization system. DFS transactions are tokenized and converted to card transactions, and from that point
onwards use the existing payment card infrastructure to transfer the mobile stored value account-originated
transactions among the banks like any other card transaction.

In Mexico, non-banks such as mobile payment providers are allowed by the Bank of Mexico to have direct
access to SPEI, the country’s Real-time Gross Settlement System. Similar integrated centralized payment switch
models are implemented inter alia in Nigeria, Peru, Brazil, and Jordan.

12 Conclusion

USSD is the dominant access and interface mechanism for DFS access, followed by STK and Java applets.

• User preferences have shifted from basic phones to feature phones, with a number of smartphones
evolving, all driven by a swathe of new manufactures taking advantage of massive improvements in
fabrication.
• Access channels could use evolving Internet-based mobile access methods such as WAP and application-
based access mechanisms, both of which take advantage of the emergence of new feature phone and
smartphones.
• Smartphones provide an enhanced interface and user experience for customers, offering access to a
range of external DFS services not available for the text-based SMS, USSD and STK.

• Java applets providing DFS on feature phones are gaining in popularity.
• Merchant services in DFS are growing, with merchants implementing NFC-based and magnetic stripe-
based POS devices to accept payments.
• While NFC-based payment facilities are growing, they are still smartphone-centric. NFC sticker technology
can retrofit all phones with NFC capabilities.
• Sound-based access to DFS services is growing, but still in limited use.
• The thin SIM is an innovative technology being implemented to obtain alternative network access, and
to secure DFS transactions.
• Iris is becoming the preferred biometric capture method in DFS countries. This is set to increase with
emergence of APIs for Iris capture and phones with Iris scanners.
• There is an increasing trend towards the integration of DFS accounts with payment switches linked to
magstripe and EMV debit cards.

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