While the mobile worker has come to mean a business executive dressed in a suit and tie the original mobile worker is far more likely to be wearing overalls and a tool belt. Many of these workers, both the self employed and those working for larger companies benefit greatly from being able to take payment for work done in the field. Advanced Merchant Solutions Inc. realized that the emergence of reliable wireless data services with broad coverage created an opportunity to allow these workers to take credit card payments in the field. In this feature SymbianOne talks to Advanced Merchant Solutions' CEO Dennis Ideue.

Richard: Dennis thanks for finding time to talk with SymbianOne. Perhaps you would like to introduce Advanced Merchant Solutions Inc. When did you form the company and how did you recognize the opportunity for mobile transaction authorization?

Dennis: A pleasure. We started off in 2001 realizing there is a huge untapped market of service people, installers, technicians, taxis drivers, and many more who can benefit from taking credit card payments anywhere. So we created the wireless transaction authorization software for the Palm operating system, rapidly adding Pocket PC and then Nextel phones, which are very popular here with their walkie-talkie function. We also have a version of our software for the PC. All of them have the same basic purpose of allowing a retailer to receive funds and make sales in the field.

What we found interesting was we thought that we would be tapping into a huge existing PDA user base, but it turned out that 85% of our users purchased their PDA to use this software. So many are first time PDA users, they were probably interested in the technology but our technology has been the right reason for them to buy into the technology. So in addition to a great device to carry their phone number and appointments they get a way to make money and download the maps, color pictures and in some cases even make a phone call!

Richard: So is the addition of Symbian OS simply a natural progression?

Dennis: We branched to the Symbian OS because we have a number of carriers here in the US, most notably T-Mobile, but also Cingular, that retail some of the Symbian OS phones. I also think the Symbian platform is remarkably nice, I've got at Nokia 3650 myself and I like it. I find it to be as easy to use as any other PDA, and I've got or played with them all, even though it's not a touch screen device.

We had in fact released a version for the Nokia 9290 Communicator and we thought that would be a real hit, but we found that there were very few units in use in the USA, and it turned out to be very disappointing.

When Series 60 came out and we could see it was going to be mainstream we saw a real opportunity. In fact one of the more interesting opportunities here in the states is with the N-Gage. Its unlocked so will run on any network, it's a GPRS data device with Bluetooth, it runs on Series 60 platform and will probably get very cheap. From my perspective it can take credit card payments as easily as play games and it's available in every mass market store in the US. We have a serious interest in repurposing that device with our Bluetooth credit card reader, printer combo device. Paired with an N-Gage it could be one of the world's least expensive wireless merchant terminals.

Richard: Not exactly the use Nokia had in mind.

Dennis: No but while Nokia are happily subsidizing the cost, expecting to make a profit on the games sales, our users get a cheap solution. I also think that the display on a device like the N-Gage also offers other opportunities such as sales presentations.

Richard: And you are using AppForge MobileVB to do this. Have you done all the development in-house?

Dennis: Yes we have done all the work internally using the AppForge development system. It has allowed us to take 80% of the source code, everything except the screen and graphic interface and reuse it. So the very same code we have for the card parsing, transaction recording and receipt printing functionality is cookie cuttered from the Palm and Pocket PC applications. Even though the user interface is coded for each platform we can still make them very similar which is important. I believe at least half of our support calls can be solved without knowing what device the user is running our software on because the interfaces are so similar. In addition to the code reuse we also benefit of using the Microsoft Visual Basic IDE with all its wonderful tools, a huge asset.

Richard: So the release of a Series 60 version very much relied on AppForge releasing the Booster.

Dennis: Yes, and we had been pushing AppForge to release it. So we now have a Series 60 version and a UIQ version for the Sony Ericsson P800 and P900. With operators like T-Mobile actively pushing these devices from its 7500 stores nationwide we realize those customers could be ours, so having a Symbian implementation is important.

Richard: What has it been like working with AppForge?

Dennis: They have certainly been responsive to requests which fit in the main stream, but for issues that pertain to a financial transfer environment they are not as responsive. However given where they are in the growth cycle I can understand their position.

Richard: Ever considered or thought there was a need to develop this technology in a platforms native language?

Dennis: Emphatically not! Simply because it would be an order of magnitude more development work to get to the same products. We would probably have a product line which was divergent across the various platforms increasing support and maintenance costs. One advantage of our unified code base is that we can develop new services, check guarantee, check verification and eventually encrypted PIN debit and immediately we can have them in all the product lines Sony Ericsson, Palm, Pocket PC, Series 60, which we could not do without a significantly larger development staff if we were working in a native language.

Also using a higher level language allows us to create a richer and more robust user interface because we don't have to code all the interface components ourselves. It means that our engineers can concentrate digging into the transaction technology and really enhancing that.

You will also be amazed at the data traffic, a credit card transaction is around 200 bytes of data, because it's all backwards compatible with the slow dial up terminals, so we have a minor overhead in database storage and data transmissions, which helps keep the application compact.

So we are really able to concentrate on what matters to our users, not the development technology. Our user interface implements all those little things that makes our customers' day to day job of making that sale just that bit easier. I believe the awards we have received for the quality of our software, being real intuitive, real simple and accessible to the least computer literate, just shows that we have taken the right approach.

Richard: So you have a good foothold in the US, any plans for taking your technology to the rest of the world?

Dennis: We have demonstrated our technology in Chinese to China Mobile and China Union Pay, luckily several of our staff members come out of a translation software company. We have a version being distributed in Germany using the Ogone Gateway system which supports multiple currencies and can be used in 10 or 12 European countries. We are happy to go anywhere where we can establish a partnership with a processor.

Advanced Merchant Solutions transaction application works in exactly the same way as a fixed terminal solution for payment authorization. Partners supply the gateway and Advanced Merchant Solutions the backend software for signature storage and other unique data as well as the terminal software. You can find out more about at www.merchantanywhere.com. The software client is also available on Handango, for Series 60 and UIQ and is supplied with fully interactive demonstration accounts.

You can find out more about MobileVB here.