SNAZ pioneers SMS based mobile commerce for 600 million mobile devices

SNAZ Commerce Solutions (www.snaz.com), a global wireless commerce provider announced today that it is launching an SMS based commerce service targeted at a global market of 600 million SMS ready mobile devices.

SMS (Short Message Service) is the fastest growing sector in the wireless data industry in terms of actual usage and revenue generation. Five billion Short Message Service (SMS) messages were sent in March, according to the GSM Association. The association claims that by December 2000, 10 billion SMS messages will be sent to and received by standard phones.

"SMS is an existing technology with wide adoption even as emerging wireless standards are battling each other for domination of the wireless web.” said Alex Judd, CTO – SNAZ Europe.  “At SNAZ, we saw a huge opportunity to power an existing global base of 600 million SMS ready devices with mobile commerce capability that includes price comparison and single click purchases from online merchants.  Our innovative London team has converted a huge messaging platform into a compelling mobile commerce opportunity.  The beauty of this solution is that these mobile devices don’t even have to be Internet enabled,” adds Alex.

The solution is currently being tested in Europe for launch in Q4, 2000. SNAZ will be the first technology provider to offer a transaction enabled SMS commerce solution to Wireless Carriers, Mobile Service Providers, Mobile Portals and Merchants in US and in Europe.  The SNAZ solution is uniquely positioned to benefit all the players in the wireless Internet space. Carriers will benefit from the additional revenues from increased SMS transmission on their networks, in addition to a share of the transaction revenues.  Merchants will benefit from the creation of a huge new market of mobile shoppers using SMS devices.

SMS users will be able to search the Internet for the best possible price before making a purchasing decision in the off-line world.  The mobile shopper can scan or enter the product ID, such as model number, SKU, etc. into an SMS message to the SNAZ commerce engine and receive the best prices from leading online merchants.  The consumer can then choose to buy securely from an online merchant using the SNAZ single-click mobile wallet to execute the transaction.