ATLANTA – Verifone has helped bring together mobile technology providers, POS manufacturers and convenience fuel marketers at Conexxus to establish a new Mobile API standard.

Verifone is the first to adopt and deploy the standard, creating a more consumer-centric mobile commerce environment in convenience stores and at the pump, by allowing tightly coordinated interaction between mobile payment and loyalty applications.

Working with mobile payment early adopters to define a standard interface, Verifone was instrumental in creating an open API that all mobile payment providers and POS manufactures can implement. Verifone and its partners are now deploying open mobile payment solutions across a wide variety of applications, including retail branded apps and direct ACH payment at the pump with community banks.

“Verifone has consistently and heavily engaged with Conexxus to accelerate mobile API standard adoption across our membership,” said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus, in a press release. “This is a great example of how the manufacturing, service provider and retail communities came together within Conexxus to update a critical industry standard.”

By taking a collaborative approach to the Conexxus mobile payment standard, Verifone prevented the project from developing on a proprietary interface across myriad service providers that would result in little consumer adoption.

“Further proliferation of closed solutions would have added significant technology complexity and support costs for retailers, making it difficult for them to select and deploy mobile solutions that best suit their needs,” said Dan Yienger, senior vice president and general manager of Verifone’s global petroleum business. “Verifone’s commitment to simplifying and enabling commerce is why we collaborated with our peers and Conexxus to set mobile API standards for the industry as a whole.”

With a ubiquitous industry standard in place, consumers can take advantage of loyalty programs, discounts, and frequent shopper reward programs at multiple gas stations and c-stores using their smartphone. Verifone was actively involved in driving this next phase of the Conexxus Mobile Standard, Mobile 2.0, that incorporates loyalty and mobile payments in the mobile commerce environment. The addition of loyalty to the mobile payment process increases the consumer value proposition and enables mobility payment providers to deliver highly customized and relevant offers that consumers are much more likely to redeem.

For more the collaboration among convenience retailers and suppliers to create the first industry-wide mobile payments standard, read “Up to Standard,” in the October issue of NACS Magazine.