Bling Nation, a mobile payments network, announced that Colorado-based Park State Bank & Trust begun offering mobile payments to its customers and community through its community payments service.
The community payments service is a local debit network, driven by the tap of a cell phone, that enables banks and merchants to avoid traditional payments network. As a result, shopping locally is promoted and money is kept within the local community. In addition, consumers can enjoy the convenience and safety of tapping their cell phones to pay for goods and services without exposing sensitive, personal information. With each purchase, a SMS text message is sent to the consumer with account balance and any rewards program updates.
The Park State Bank & Trust said that it is offering the community payments service to more than 30 local merchants and plans to expand mobile payments network service to more local merchants, to support local initiatives.
Bling Nation claimed that its core technology is an integrated issuing and acquiring platform designed specifically for local and regional banks. Through its community payments service, it enables financial institutions to support payments between their local demand deposit account (DDA) customers and their merchant customers by bypassing the current global debit payment model with a local payment network.
Tony Perry, president of Park State Bank & Trust, said: “The introduction of Bling Nation’s mobile payments network to the community has been very well-received. Most of our residents work in Colorado Springs but do their banking and shopping locally, and they have embraced the ability to pay for purchases with their mobile phone … including the Mayor.”
Meyer Malka, co-CEO of Bling Nation, said: “Our community payments service provides consumers with a fast and secure way to pay for purchases. Circumventing traditional global network and their interchange fees enables Park State Bank & Trust to retain more profit from each transaction and to offer participating merchants better processing rates and consumers rewards programs. The bank has signed more than 30 merchants to date, and we expect to see continued growth and adoption by consumers, merchants and neighboring financial institutions.”
