WAP for lunch

Ordering fast food is much easier and a whole lot faster in Finland.

At Carrols hamburger restaurants in Helsinki, you can order and pay for a burger and fries with your WAP phone from your office or en route to the restaurant. After entering a PIN number, you can choose a nearby Carrols and what you'd like to purchase, and you'll receive an order number on your phone. You can have your food delivered or you can pick it up. When you reach the restaurant, you can bypass the lines and step up to the counter, provide your number and pick up your pre-ordered food. Your prepaid account is debited for the amount of the meal.

This m-commerce magic is enabled by Aldata (www.aldata.fi), a Helsinki-based wireless software provider that designs and markets software for retail m-commerce transactions. The company has deployed its Mobile Transaction Server (MTS) m-commerce system in six installations in four countries, including Finland, Lebanon, the Netherlands and the United States. It's a device-independent m-commerce system for ordering, payment and customer-data collection in wireless networks that offers a new way to offer goods and services to customers.

The MTS system sits on the carrier or bank side, depending on who purchases the solution. Users can place orders from retailers via WAP, SMS, interactive voice response or the Internet. Aldata's applications are enabled by underlying technologies that include WLAN, Bluetooth, GSM, GPRS and future 3G networks, as well as RFID.

"MTS enables consumers to purchase goods and services over the wireless Internet anywhere and at any time," said Richard Lehtola, executive vice president, e-business, adding that Aldata has used the system for a year and a half from its Helsinki office to order lunch.

Today, the MTS system offers a list of Helsinki restaurants to choose from, as well as menus. In the future, the system will be location-based and choose the closest Carrols, for example, for users to order from.

The Carrols installation operates over Sonera's (www.sonera.fi) wireless network. Carriers and ASPs can introduce new services and generate network traffic while merchants can save money by speeding up services, selling more and serving more customers in less time. The value proposition for the carrier is generating more network traffic and minutes, data collection for CRM and enabling transaction capabilities, said Lehtola.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch.

According to Lehtola, Aldata's MTS agreement with Visa allows merchants to accept Visa as a payment method and allows the credit-card company to bill users. The transaction fee billed by Visa in Finland is typically 1.25% of the purchase. But payment method and model depend on the retailer. In some cases, banks bill for transactions. Still other payments can be debited directly out of a user's bank account.

At Carrols, transactions are pre-paid. Users must register via a Web site to set up an account or payment method before using Carrols WAP service, which appears as a front page on their wireless device.

Sonera receives about $1 per minute for the airtime used. Typically, transactions can take anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes to order food. But Lehtola said the minute fee per transaction doesn't deter Finnish consumers from ordering meals via m-commerce.

Recently, Aldata and Nokia (www.nokia.com) have signed an OEM agreement by which Nokia will resell MTS licenses, upgrading and maintenance services, enabling integration of the MTS system in WAP applications Nokia supplies to its customers.

Aldata will begin MTS system deployments in the United States this month with Moneyfone, VoiceStream Wireless' (www.voicestream.com) distribution channel Wireless-4-less (www.wireless-4-less.com), and Digital Systems. Moneyfone plans to launch a new wireless service that will enable purchase and payment of products and services using Web-enabled wireless phones. With every mobile phone sold by Wireless-4-Less and equipped with a VoiceStream connection, Wireless- 4-Less will register a Moneyfone WAP/WEB page linking the user with the services offered by the mobile portal. M-commerce transaction application provider ZonePay.com (a href= "http://www.zonepay.com">www.zonepay.com) will also roll out MTS in the United States shortly.

But such an m-commerce business model may need to be redrawn for U.S. carriers. As troublesome as billing is and will continue to be for carriers, they won't want to surrender customers and wireless transactions to third-party banks or credit-card companies that charge Finnish wireless subscribers for m-commerce purchases directly.