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Western Union, CPS launch mobile car payments pilot

The Western Union Co., together with Consumer Portfolio Services Inc., has launched a pilot project enabling CPS customers to trigger their monthly car payment directly from their mobile phone.

Western Union tapped VeriSign's Messaging and Mobile Media Division for the mobile platform. Unlike mobile payment services that direct the consumer to a website or interactive voice response system, or IVR, the new service lets consumers initiate their payment using their phone's text-messaging service based on debit or credit card information entered online.

"Consumer Portfolio Services is a long time customer of ours, and we were looking for a mobile solution to allow consumers to make payments on their loans from Consumer Portfolio, so we partnered with VeriSign as one of the leaders in the mobile space to combine our payments expertise and their mobile expertise to provide a mobile solution for CPS," said Steve Kramer, vice president of electronic payments for Western Union, Englewood, CO.

Western Union is a giant in the area of global money transfer services.

Together with its Vigo and Orlandi Valuta-branded money transfer services, Western Union provides consumers with ways to send and receive money around the world, as well as send payments and purchase money orders.

It operates through a combined network of more than 379,000 agent locations in 200 countries and territories.

Western Union Payment Services processed more than 412 million consumer-to-business transactions for the full year of 2008.

"We already take millions of payments a month via IVR, and today a very high percentage of those calls are being made via mobile phones, so the next logical step is offering another way to make that payment via SMS," Mr. Kramer said.

"While they're on the phone they're getting a marketing message: ?By the way, would you like to start making payments using the phone you're on?'" he said.

VeriSign provides global application services that deliver SMS, MMS and mobile content across carriers and mobile devices worldwide.

VeriSign's combined mobile messaging networks, both A2P and P2P, connect to more than 700 carriers in over 200 countries and reach more than 3 billion wireless subscribers.

VeriSign processed more than 224 billion messages in 2008, and more than 1.1 billion on December 25 alone.

According to Javelin Strategy and Research, approximately 58 percent of the adult population currently uses the text function on their mobile phone.

As adults continue to increase their adoption of text messaging and more text message users adopt mobile banking, an opportunity has emerged for text-based bill payment.

Western Union, a leading provider of bill payment services, and VeriSign, a leader in mobile messaging and mobile banking, have teamed with CPS to pilot a service that offers convenience and ease of use to the wired consumer.

CPS customers can sign up for the Western Union Bill Alert Text Message service online at http://www.consumerportfolio.com or by telephone at 888-469-4520.

The customer enters his CPS account number, mobile phone number and debit account information.

Once the consumer has confirmed enrollment, monthly alerts are sent through VeriSign, detailing the payment amount due.

The consumer submits his payment approval by texting "YESCPS" directly through the mobile device initiating a Western Union Speedpay transaction.

Western Union processes the payment which is then credited to the customer's CPS account.

Consumers can end their participation in the program at any time by texting "STOP."
The pilot program will run for approximately three months, at which time it will be evaluated for further rollout.

"The more channels you can give your consumers, the more you can help drive electronic payments, providing self-service abilities and ways for billers to reduce their costs," Mr. Kramer said. "By adding the ability to alert consumers and let them pay via SMS, the speed with which billers receive payments can be increased quite a bit.

"They get a text message, reply to it and the payment has been made," he said.