Speech and imaging solutions provider Nuance (News - Alert) Communications has signed a partnership agreement with Vesta Corporation, a company specializing in electronic payment solutions for wireless operators, to co-promote and integrate Nuance’s Mobile Care application with Vesta’s Mobile Payment Platform, allowing them to deliver a comprehensive payment service to mobile operators worldwide.

 

“At present, research indicates that 50 percent of customer care calls to mobile operators are payment related,” said Chris Parsons (News - Alert), chief marketing officer of Vesta Corporation.

“Our partnership with Nuance will ensure that innovative and user friendly, end-to-end secure payment capabilities can be delivered directly from the handset.”

 

“This will dramatically reduce the number of customer care calls operators contend with as well as reducing the costs associated with supporting customer care operations,” Parsons added.

 

This partnership, as stated, is aimed at expanding the on-device self-service capabilities of Nuance Mobile Care (News - Alert) by enabling the subscribers of mobile operators to quickly and easily make payments and handle other payment-related functions directly through their mobile handsets. Other added functionality includes bill presentment and account balance, balance alerts, bill payment, prepaid top-up, payment history and enabling general account inquiries.

 

“Our partnership with Vesta supports our strategic direction toward expanding Nuance’s Mobile Care offerings and our focus on providing innovative, secure self-service solutions to enterprises and mobile operators worldwide,” said Bob Wise (News - Alert), general manager and senior vice president of Nuance Mobile Care.

 

Also, through this partnership, Nuance and Vesta are taking strides to eliminate wait times for customer service agents and reduce the number of queries being handled by the mobile operator’s customer care facilities, in turn driving down costs and improving customer service. Furthermore, Vesta’s technology fully complies with the PCI Data Security Standard, thus making the whole process more secured.

 

Both the companies are also planning to showcase the application at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) show in Barcelona from Feb. 15 through the 18th.