The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £1.5m to stimulate new ways for mobile commerce (mCommerce) to counter the threat of theft and fraud.
This Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition is an opportunity to develop new ways to go shopping, enable enterprise, to transfer money or to transact anything of value – but to do it in a way that creates confidence and security in these new platforms. The challenge is how to make mCommerce meet the needs of all consumers? As the organisers say, the next generation of personal computing is rapidly developing on smart phones and tablets and, as a result, the next generation of online commerce will be mobile.
This competition will fund researchers to develop mCommerce products or services that have secure attributes and reduce the probability of fraud. Up to £1m is available for phase one of the competition and up to a further £500k may be available in a second phase to further develop phase one projects. It is open to single companies or bodies from the private, public and third sectors, including charities. Projects will last up to five months and projects will attract a 100 per cent-funded development contract of up to £50k. Projects will be supported further towards commercialisation by the Technology Strategy Board and the Home Office helping companies gain exposure to commercial organisations via the Forum for Innovation in Crime Prevention.
The deadline for registration is noon on January 9, 2013 and applications must be received by noon on January 16.
Information and networking events run in London on December 4, Manchester December 5; and a there is a webinar on December 6. Registration details for all events and competition details are at –
http://www.innovateuk.org/content/competition/preventing-fraud-in-mcommerce.ashx
