Netclearance Looks to Build on Earlier Successes in Mobile Payments

If Netclearance isn’t a familiar name, it might be because most of its recent successes were focused on Scandinavia.

The company recently struck up a fairly major deal with Danske Bank, which saw its mobile payment system get installed with 30,000 retailers from Starbucks locations to various grocery stores.

Now, looking to build on that success, Netclearance is out to expand its operations.

According to Netclearance’s chief executive officer (CEO) David Fernandez, Netclearance’s value comes in the form of a hefty drop in transaction fees, a 50 percent cut at last report, as well as a much more rapid payment.

That’s a worthwhile proposition, especially given the sheer inertia in the mobile payments space as users stick to cash or magnetic-strip cards. Mobile payments in general have been hit by this inertia, as a CCS Insight report notes.

Even major figures like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay can only draw a small percentage of their respective walled gardens, and individual store mobile wallet systems likewise only go so far.

Netclearance, however, improves the proposition; it allows businesses to process mobile payments themselves through their own network, bypassing credit card companies altogether.

Using a small terminal that offers near field communications (NFC), Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi technology, the system allows the mobile payment to proceed directly to the business with the terminal.

Netclearance has drawn interest not just in Scandinavia, but also in Mexico and even in the United States; the company is reportedly working with “a large financial institution” to bring Netclearance to the U.S., but no deal is official yet.

Since this is something of a device-agnostic system, it’s entirely possible that Netclearance could make a splash wherever it goes.

Businesses might well be willing to offer premiums to those willing to use Netclearance as a payment system; rapidity of payment is hard to refuse, and cutting out some of those processing fees couldn’t hurt either.

Netclearance would have to do a sound job of marketing, though, as the name is about as unfamiliar as the value proposition.

With the right push behind it, it might well be able to make an impact in a largely contested market. It remains to be seen just how well it can do in the field.