T-Mobile, the mobile arm of Deutsch Telekom AG, was not named in Simpay’s final statement as the cause of its demise, but its departure had been widely predicted in the Germany press.
Simpay was set up in 2003 by leading operators Orange, Telefonica Moviles, T-Mobile, and Vodafone as a way of boosting m-commerce by offering an interoperable service, enabling customers to buy from any company, regardless of which operator they had chosen. It was also designed to encourage cross-border trade by enabling users to buy from merchants in other countries.
But with the launch due in Spain in only a few weeks time, the members have decided not to launch Simpay on a pan-European scale after T-Mobile’s decision to abandon the project for the foreseeable future.
Instead, Simpay’s operations will be scaled back with immediate effect. Member operators will be able to exploit Simpay’s intellectual property rights at a national level, although international interoperability remains a goal. The members will make known their individual plans in due course, they said in a statement.
The operators said they continue to share the vision of the enormous potential of the mobile commerce market and the importance of providing a robust and straightforward payment facility to content providers.
