Page 83 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Technology, innovation and competition

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

3 Access function

DFS in developed markets are making headlines because of their significant effort in virtualizing the physical
wallet into one accessible via an electrical device, e.g. mobile phone or laptop. Whether for remote payments
or proximity payments (often using radio frequency identification (RFID) or near field communication (NFC)
technology), for consumers in developed markets (with ubiquitous mobile data available at ever lower costs
and mobile broadband available at every corner coffee shop), it does not take a great leap of the imagination
to envision a world of frictionless, cashless, and effortless mobile commerce. However, the story in developing
markets is far different.

The section describes the multiple access options for the vendor platform to improve user experience.

3.1 Remote access

3.1.1 Unstructured supplementary service data (USSD)

USSD was built into the global system for mobile (GSM) specifications to support network operations. Later, a
few operators began using it to interact with users for simple purposes like airtime top up and balance checks.

3.1.2 Subscriber identity module (SIM) toolkit (STK)

STK refers to the placement of a small application into the memory of a user’s mobile phone SIM card. STKs
are a popular user interface (UI) for MNO-provided DFS.

3.1.3 SIM overlay
SIM overlay (also known as thin SIM or skin-SIM) is a thin plastic cover or coating with an embedded chip that
adheres to a SIM card, and effectively re-routes calls/short message service (SMS).

3.1.4 Interactive voice response (IVR)
IVR is an older, but tried-and-true technology, which is popular in call centres and allows a computer or other
system to interact with humans. In the traditional set up, a customer receives a phone call on their mobile
device and a pre-recorded message is played, which prompts the customer to use their mobile phone keypad
to provide an input response (which leverages dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signalling), which in turn
is received by the computer system to record the response. Sometimes it is combined with a user-initiated
SMS to a pre-defined phone number or short code (e.g., to initiate a peer-to-peer payment), which prompts
an IVR phone call to the user.

3.1.5 Web access
For web access, the webpage is used to access the online payment platform e.g. PayPal, Amazon Payments,
Google Wallet, Ali Payment, etc.

3.1.6 Application/in-app access
For application/in-app access are purchases made from within a mobile application. The purchasing process
is completed directly from within the application and is seamless to the user, in most cases .
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1 Source: http:// www. webopedia. com/ TERM/ I/ in- app_ purchase. html

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