Use CardinalCommerce for Your Mobile Commerce Site

By Janine Warner, David LaFontaine, and Lee Andron from iPhone and iPad Web Design For Dummies

CardinalCommerce, shown in the figure, has partnered with Sprint to provide the back-end payment solution for the new Sprint Mobile Wallet. Although CardinalCommerce formerly specialized in handling large transactions for major multinational corporations, it has made a concerted effort to reach out to small- and medium-size businesses, and its partnership with Sprint is intriguing.

Unlike AT&T’s entry into the mobile commerce space, Sprint and CardinalCommerce are not trying to force merchants and shoppers to buy things by adding the sales price to the user's existing cellphone bill. Instead, the Sprint Mobile Wallet aggregates your existing payment methods — PayPal, Amazon Payments, MasterCard, and Visa, for example — in one place, and allows you to choose which one you want to use to pay for something.

The Sprint Mobile Wallet is brand-new and mostly untested. However, Sprint claims it has designed this payment system so that mobile developers can process transactions quickly and easily on their sites, and the Sprint handsets available as of late 2011 will all come preloaded with the Sprint Mobile Wallet.

Sprint also plans to make its Mobile Wallet service available to users on other phone carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon, by creating apps and web-based plug-ins that allow designers and developers to access the service. Check the CardinalCommerce site for the latest developments and offerings if you’re considering this service.