Accenture says Lets Talk Payments, launches customizable Mobile Wallet for clients

Accenture, global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, has launched a new mobile wallet platform. New features include integrating 'big data' analytics capabilities and recommendation tools to enable its clients to build personalized, mobile e-commerce applications.

The Accenture mobile wallet platform allows end-users to manage and operate all their cards, including credit, debit, transport, loyalty and gift cards. It manages proximity transactions and payments, which can be made through near field communications (NFC) technology or QR codes, with the relevant enabled cards presented at compatible points of sales.

• The Accenture mobile wallet enables users to send money to other users or future users.

• The Accenture mobile wallet has integrated Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) beacons into its service portfolio, which enables customers to complete transactions without an Internet connection.

• The platform now includes the Accenture Recommendation Engine, an integrated big data solution delivered via the cloud. This engine offers personalised recommendations to customers in real time.

• With an extensive library of machine learning algorithms, the engine enables businesses to seamlessly filter recommendations based on predefined business and merchandising rules.

• Offers to be presented to customers will be then selected automatically, based on advanced analytics.

• Buyers are identified through geo-location features that businesses will allow them to opt into, for example in mobile apps, according to Accenture's mobility product chief, Robert Hasson.

New features of the platform also include:

Trusted Service Manager: Letting banks or other service providers send and personalize smartcard applications. It allows for remote removal, blocking and other status actions related to cards, to protect users in cases of lost or stolen devices.

Accenture Customer Insight integration: This enables insights and analytics of the wallet users, including custom segmentations based on campaign behaviours and offer preferences for targeting. Businesses and merchants will be able to move rapidly from insights to real time campaigns executed via the mobile wallet, by utilizing business intelligence tools for dashboards and reporting.

Push Payment Functionality: Allows purchasers to avoid sending their personal and credit data to retailers. Instead, they can store their data with their trusted financial institutions, which can then verify transactions for the retailers and buyers.

'The key to a vibrant, viable digital commerce ecosystem is a robust platform to underpin its operations. This platform will help our clients - be they banks, mobile operators, merchants or a partnership of them all - to understand which offers to extend to which consumers and when, said Accenture Mobility’s Jin Lee. The platform then provides the functionality with which to pay for those offers, while gathering data to continue the learning and relationship-building process with that individual,' he added.

For many, digital commerce still has barriers to adoption, and a robust, modular platform like the Accenture Mobile Wallet is just what an enhanced payments ecosystem needs to take off. There are many pieces of the puzzle to bring together to help ensure that end users are confident in mobile payments technology itself, as well as verifying that merchants, banks and other stakeholders are able to work together in a productive ecosystem to add value for each other, said Hasson. The Accenture Mobile Wallet integrates advanced analytics capabilities and confidence-building tools that can make digital commerce a more valuable and productive asset for everyone, especially the customer, who will receive more relevant, targeted offers than ever before, direct to their device.