LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE ASIA CONGRESS 2011: The mobile money market requires consumers to change their spending habits if it’s to take off as the main way in which people buy goods and pay for services, according to SK Planet SVP Hoojong Kim.

Speaking to the Show Daily ahead of his appearance on the Mobile Money panel at Mobile Asia Congress tomorrow, Kim said challenges remain around infrastructure – such as readers and networks – standardisation, roaming and security, but the toughest challenge for uptake is changing the behaviour of consumers.

“Customers have been accustomed to using cash, cheques or plastic cards in payments for the past few decades. The current users of mobile money services are mostly early adopters and still many others hesitate to incorporate new money services into their lives,” he said.

SK Telecom’s mobile money business is conducted through mobile internet spin off SK Planet, which currently offers three mobile money services: pre-paid, credit cards and mobile wallet or integrated payment.

The Mobile T-money pre-paid mobile money service is operated in collaboration with Korea Smart Card and is used for public transport and small payments for consumer and digital goods. The mobile credit card service is provided through Korean credit card companies Shinhan and Hana SK, the latter of which is a SK Telecom/Hana Bank joint venture.

The Smart Wallet service provides mobile credit card, public transport, mobile coupons and mobile membership loyalty programmes. There are also plans to launch an integrated payment system which allows customers to pay by mobile with a single NFC tag.

Kim feels that SK Planet plays an important role in the mobile money ecosystem. “We do not want to dominate and conquer the whole mobile money environment but we aim to be a platform provider. We are trying to make a global technical standard in cooperation with several major players such as the GSMA, MNOs, manufacturers, and OS providers,” he said.

The use of mobile commerce is  increasing in Korea and SK Planet has launched an online marketplace called 11st to allow customers to access discounts by using mobile credit card payments. “We believe that the potential synergy between NFC handsets and mobile credit cards pulls ideal consumer demands,” Kim said.

The plan is for SK Planet to develop an open platform that supports mobile money services developed by third parties and offer open APIs to other players to accelerate the adoption of mobile money technology not only for consumers but all small and medium-sized businesses.

“We’d like to eliminate several roadblocks such as the difficulty of putting the information of payment into mobile handsets and the complexity of authentication. So we will provide a new authentication technology using OTP in order to ensure a high level of security,” added Kim. The Mobile T-money service is well used in Korea where pre-paid transport cards are commonly used. Kim said many people are now moving their pre-paid tickets from plastic cards to their mobile device. In response to this demand, SK Planet is pre-loading the Mobile T-money application for all NFC-enabled handsets, with the help of SK Telecom and handset manufacturers.

Kim said mobile money services will diversify in the future, enhancing consumer experiences. “For example, consumers would be provided with customised offers including practical benefits. Consumers would be satisfied with enlightened financial management under high-level security. They don’t need to bring all of their plastic credit cards and their purchasing records will be securely managed.”