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ISSUE NO 61 IN SEARCH OF THE BUSINESS MODEL

SA’S FUNDAMO GETS READY TO START SELLING MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM

Cape Town-based technology start-up Fundamo <http://196.36.119.109/sections/search/search.asp?
Action=X&SearchString= Fundamo>has just won three awards at South African technology start-up forum First Tuesday’s awards ceremony this week, including the overall Grand Prix award.Fundamo, which enables secure payments to be made from a mobile phone, now faces Grand Prix winners from around the world in the international First Tuesday Internet Excellence awards.

The company also walked away with the Bleeding Edge award for technology innovation which it claims will transform the Internet or ebusiness landscape, and the Rookie of the Year category for creating a new way of doing business.

Fundamo, a Sanlam financial services initiative, has successfully piloted its mobile payment platform on both mobile operator networks and plans to take its architecture to market mid year.

Fundamo (http://www.fundamo.com) is a mobile payment solutions provider backed by financial services conglomerate Sanlam and equity partners Venfin and Archway. Having recently completed the development of its mobile payment solution, the company is currently involved in marketing the offering to banks and mobile operators, systems integrators. It also provides training in all aspects of the Fundamo solutions as well as certification of partners and products. The Fundamo solution is account based and developed on open standards, making it easy to integrate with third party applications.

"We’ve developed an architecture with related business rules for a comprehensive, interoperable mobile payment solution," said Fundamo CEO Hannes van Rensburg. "We aim to make our business and technology models freely available to third-party developers wanting to tailor it to their business needs."

The platform allows third-party payments to be easily and seamlessly integrated. Users could buy tickets, pay bills or purchase prepaid coupons from their mobile phones.

"The idea of doing business from your mobile phone, anytime, from any place, has captured our imaginations. We want to empower people to be in control of their finances and be able to access their money on the fly," said van Rensburg. "Mobile payments have the potential to profoundly impact the way people think, live and interact."

For the full list of awards, see www.firsttuesday.co.za/awards

SOUTH AFRICA’S UPE SETS UP USABILITY LAB

The University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) recently launched a Usability Laboratory.

(source: http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2001/0104230809.asp )

VIVENDI UNIVERSAL WILL BUY MP3.COM

The media Goliath has struck a deal to purchase the Net music company - which it had sued earlier - for US$372 million.

(source: http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=479827 )

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