While some companies are still struggling to find their footing in the burgeoning market of mobile payment, Omne Mobile Payments is bridging the gap between the wallet and the mobile technology. Right now, the LA company is proving it’s got the formula right with beta tests with the Ministry of Finance in Dubai.
With the help of entities in Dubai, Omne plans on developing a centralized system where everything from bank cards to movie tickets will be available through a phone app. With the exception of the one device, physical cards will be phased out of the country within several years. The difference between this system and other systems is that users will be able to utilize this platform at any location.
“You can’t use your mobile phone to pay for things everywhere but what you can use is your credit card,” Omne’s director of strategy David Pulito said. “And the perfect solution to me is something that’s using mobile wallet technology but can be used anywhere.”
Pulito’s perfect solution is exactly what the Omne card is. As the first product of Omne Mobile Payments, the universal card looks and feels like a single credit card, while maintaining control over the user’s credit, debit, reward, gift and loyalty cards via information entered onto a mobile device. Yet it can be swiped like a normal credit card at a store.
Omne began as the brainchild of CEO Dan Auten, just months before his graduation from the University of California, Davis. Auten said his background in managing small businesses made him want to change the way mobile wallets worked.
“For consumers to really mass adopt a mobile wallet solution, it needed to work everywhere,” Auten said. “After looking at a bunch of reports and payment stats and things like that, I realized it could be another seven to 10 years before established businesses adopted the hardware needed for that.”
This realization spurred the 2012 launch of Omne, which has since grown into a 10-person team with roots in LA and branches around the world. Since presenting at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas in late 2013, Omne has seen a significant increase in interest, including from larger businesses that previously “wouldn’t give us the time of day,” Auten said. Omne’s progress was further helped along with a $2 million investment from Abdullah Al-Dhowayan, who manages the Al-Dhowayan Group.
Omne card is still in the pre-launch, testing phase and is looking to expand its hardware development and software team to replace the existing app. However, Omne expects to eliminate all bugs in the system trials that are already underway in Dubai with the Ministry of Finance.
“Dubai is an incredible place to do business,” Auten said. “The government is the most innovative in the world with the Ministry of Finance and Roads and Transport Authority leading the way.”
Moving forward, Auten said he hopes to see Omne completely digitized so consumers can just use their phones instead of a physical universal card. Although, until the payment infrastructure is updated over the next decade, the universal card is the only way consumers can utilize the benefits of a mobile wallet. So for now, Omne is focused on widespread usability and security.
“Our goal is to provide a universal and secure mobile wallet to consumers; we want to do this by actually keeping payments with the payment companies,” Auten said. “We’re a technology company, but at the same time I think a couple other players are looking to disintermediate the banks. While everyone doesn’t necessarily like banks all the time, they tend to be more secure with our finances and are a lot more protective of people’s privacy, whereas some companies tend to sell as much data as they can. Our primary focus at all times is security.”
