Alaric, a provider of fraud prevention and payments solutions, is partnering with mobile money provider Mistral Mobile to offer a white label mobile payment solution for global financial institutions. The new product will integrate the Mistral Mobile Money Mobility Suite as a user interface with the Alaric Authentic solution for transaction processing.

The companies said that the result will be a scalable mobile payment solution that remains reliable even as volumes grow. What's more, the joint solution will address cost and infrastructure challenges without requiring a mobile data connection or partnership with mobile operators. So service providers will be able offer the solution to any customer with any mobile phone, regardless of carrier.

"While there are mobile payment schemes in place today, many of them are monolithic solutions that can't be configured to allow new innovations to be delivered to the customer quickly, and are also highly dependent either on the mobile operators, or customers having advanced smartphones," said Ludwig Schulze, CEO of Mistral Mobile. "By partnering with Alaric, we can offer Mistral Mobile's knowledge of the mobile arena with Alaric's flexible, configurable payment processing engine to sit at the heart of our mobile financial services offering, which allows us to reach and serve everyone in a market."

Mike Alford, Alaric's CEO said the solution will have particular application for the world's unbanked.

"There are approximately 2.5 billion underbanked people in the world today," Alaric said. "Where there are high levels of unbanked, there are also very limited bank branch networks. There is demand among these people for basic banking services, especially as they become more affluent, and mobile technology provides an obvious answer."

Alford said Alaric has taken careful account of the practicalities of delivering mobile payments, including the limitations of prepaid accounts and low 3G penetration in the target market. Mistral Mobile provides the ideal solution, he said.

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