NEWARK, Calif., Feb. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Together with Team One Credit Union, MShift Inc. is aggressively expanding its AnyWhereMobile® Mobile Payment Network in Michigan with merchants ranging from gas stations to restaurants to retail and services. Merchant-funded rewards play a major role in driving the growth and expansion of AnyWhereMobile®. With AnyWhereMobile®, merchants pay a very low flat interchange fee and are highly motivated to pass that savings back to their customers through Rewards Programs.
Target's Debit Card (REDcard™ Debit) is one of the most successful and popular examples of a merchant influencing their customers to pay using a lower cost payment option by offering its customers "5% Off Today & Everyday" to use REDcard™. Yet customers generally prefer to have a single payment method that can be used to earn great discounts and other rewards at all of the merchants they frequent. Moreover, ACH-based payments provided by merchants, such as REDcard™ Debit, come with the risk of insufficient funds. Being able to secure the payments in real-time and be assured the funds are good would greatly reduce any merchant's cost of offering ACH-based payments.
With its patented payment system, which combines account transfers with ACH aggregation, AnyWhereMobile® is able to satisfy the needs of both customers and merchants that are not met with existing merchant ACH-based payments programs today. To pay with AnyWhereMobile®, the customer launches their mobile banking app with AnyWhereMobile®, scans the QR code at the POS, authorizes the transaction amount using their PIN or fingerprint recognition and then receives a transaction receipt via their mobile banking app. For large merchants, AnyWhereMobile® has an API so that it can be plugged into a merchant's own app as a debit mobile payment option. The merchant's customers initiate the payment by launching the merchant app and scanning the QR code at the POS, which then automatically launches the mobile banking app for that customer to authorize the payment through their bank or credit union's app. In both cases, the funds for the purchase are secured from the customer's account in real-time by the customer's bank or credit union and transferred into a holding account. At the ACH cut-off time for each business day, all aggregated transactions for each merchant from the same bank or credit union are delivered to the merchant via a single ACH transaction. This ACH aggregation effectively makes the ACH cost allocated to each individual purchase made at the merchant that day negligible.
From a regulatory and consumer perspective, an AnyWhereMobile® transaction is equivalent to a real-time account transfer within the same bank or credit union, not an ACH transaction, which means there is no risk of insufficient funds for the merchant. The AnyWhereMobile® combination of low interchange and ensured good funds enable merchants to concentrate on improving and expanding their own customer rewards programs.
"AnyWhereMobile® is unlike any other mobile payment platform on the market today," says Jacqueline Snell, VP of Strategic Initiatives at MShift. "Through innovation, we have built a payment network that reverses the growing conflict between issuers and merchants due to high interchange costs, so that they are motivated to join together in offering AnyWhereMobile® to the benefit of their shared customers."
"Merchants in our community are excited to have a mobile payment option that is issued by a trusted local financial institution and at the same time lower their interchange costs by more than half," said Tim Ferrio, eServices Supervisor at Team One Credit Union. "We have gotten very positive responses from the merchants that are participating in the pilot so far, and we are in the process of bringing on board a growing number of merchants who have agreed to accept AnyWhereMobile payments."
AnyWhereMobile® offers an inherent win-win model by drastically lowering costs for merchants, banks and credit unions as well as consumers. This win-win model serves to ally merchants with thousands of credit unions and community banks to work together to expand the AnyWhereMobile Payment Network to jointly benefit their shared customers.
About Team One Credit Union please see www.teamonecu.org, Press Release contact: Dana Tell
About MShift Inc. please see www.mshift.com, Press Release contact: Jacqueline Snell.
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SOURCE MShift, Inc.
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