ViVOtech Wins Prestigious 2010 Mobility Award in Mobile Commerce Category From MobileTrax

LAS VEGAS, March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- INTERNATIONAL CTIA WIRELESS 2010 -- Silicon Valley-based ViVOtech, the leader in Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile payments, loyalty and marketing applications and contactless readers, announced today it has been chosen to receive the 2010 Mobile Commerce Mobility Award from MobileTrax for its ViVOwallet® mobile wallet software for NFC mobile phones. The ViVOwallet was chosen as the best-in-class, feature-rich digital wallet for mobile phones enabling consumers to pay for purchases at any store with their NFC mobile phones, as well as participate in mobile promotions and loyalty programs and receive mobile coupons.

"ViVOtech has been a pioneer in mobile payments and its NFC wallet was chosen because it offers a function-rich, personalized experience to consumers when they go out shopping," said J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., principal analyst with MobileTrax. "ViVOtech's solution allows consumers to easily download their credit or debit cards into their phones, know the balance on their cards at all times, and tap their phone to pay with a selected card."

Purdy also points out that ViVOwallet's unique features allow consumers to enjoy dynamic loyalty programs from merchants, purchase gift cards and send them to friends, request personalized coupons that can be redeemed electronically, and tap a shelf tag with their phone to find out more information about products and compare prices.

"ViVOwallet is the first NFC mobile phone payment system to support secure credit and debit card download and payment, the first to support multiple cards, coupon downloading from smart posters and other key functionality introduced and tested over the course of dozens of trials we've been following over the years," Purdy said.

ViVOwallet is a versatile, full-featured wallet application with an intuitive user interface that runs on any NFC-enabled mobile handset. ViVOwallet manages credit, debit, prepaid, gift, loyalty and other cards stored on the mobile device. At the same time, it allows consumers to enjoy personalized offers, coupons and instant rewards offered by merchants, card issuers or manufactures. ViVOwallet is convenient, allowing consumers to find the best products and best prices with personalized services from merchants that users opt-in to receive. ViVOwallet is designed to be SPAM-free, using smart chip-based, secure communication technologies. Consumers may opt-in for what they want, when they want it, in a hassle-free environment.

The ViVOwallet uses a patented, secure over-the-air provisioning process for handling payment and non-payment information. Consumers can easily load their card information onto any NFC phone through an intuitive user interface in minutes, with no training or visit to websites or bank branches required.

"ViVOtech is proud to receive this prestigious award that validates its vision for how mobile will change the consumer shopping experience, enabling a new level of interaction with products and merchants with personalized services and instant rewards that will improve how they pay for purchases in the future," said Michael Mullagh, CEO of ViVOtech. "ViVOtech will continue to add new use cases for consumers to enjoy a richer mobile shopping experience while enabling merchants and card issuers to deliver the optimum value to their customers."

For more information about ViVOtech's contactless and NFC payment systems, visit www.vivotech.com.

About the Mobility Award

The 2010 Mobility Awards will honor the best and finest mobile & wireless products and services in the industry.  The awards are selected by Dr. Gerry Purdy and are based on what he feels the firms, products & services have made or will make the greatest impact on the industry.  They are not given out generically; the product must already be shipping or about to ship and covers products from the prior year.

About MobileTrax

MobileTrax, LLC is a leading mobile and wireless industry analyst firm and is a trusted source of information regarding the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry. MobileTrax provides market research, conferences and consulting services regarding enterprise and consumer markets. MobileTrax is lead by J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., a globally recognized authority on mobile computing and wireless data communications. He writes and publishes Inside Mobile, a newsletter that is published each Wednesday and is read by more than 100,000 people. More information can be found at www.mobiletrax.com

About ViVOtech

ViVOtech (www.vivotech.com) is the leading end-to-end enabler of next-generation mobile payments, loyalty and marketing solutions. ViVOtech provides Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile payment solutions, mobile marketing and loyalty applications software, Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning infrastructure software, NFC smart posters and contactless terminals. ViVOtech's products are used by most prominent retailers all over the globe; the company has shipped over 600,000 contactless and NFC payment terminals to more than 35 countries. In 2009, ViVOtech received the prestigious Frost and Sullivan North American Smart Cards Product Line Strategy of the Year Award. ViVOtech's investors include Citi, First Data Corporation, Motorola Ventures, NCR and Nokia Growth Partners.

SOURCE ViVOtech