China Mobile Cooperates With Anti-Virus Firms

UMPay, an affiliate of China Mobile (CHL) responsible for China Mobile's Mobile Wallet service, reports that China Mobile has reached cooperation agreements with the three major Chinese anti-virus companies.

The deal with Kingsoft, Rising and Jiangmin will enable mobile phone users to pay for anti-virus software with their mobile phones. According to their agreement, users of China Mobile's Mobile Wallet will get the serial numbers of the anti-virus software of the three firms by sending relevant short message codes to a special service number.

The monthly fees range from CNY10 to CNY20 per month, which will be directly deducted from the users' calling fees. China Mobile says apart from cooperating with anti-virus companies, it will also extend Mobile Wallet to software, email, and computer game card companies by making use of the high popularity and real time payment of mobile phones.

According to the companies, China's e-payment market is growing by more than 30% annually. It is estimated that the total e-payment market volume will reach CNY60 billion in 2007 and mobile phone payment will become the fastest growing sector of e-payment.