Cimbal Inc. is an independent software vendor

Independent software vendor

Independent software vendor is a business term for companies specializing in making or selling software, designed for mass marketing or for niche markets...

 located in San Francisco, USA. It develops and markets the mobile payment

Mobile Payment

Mobile financial services, also referred to as mobile money, mobile payment, mobile banking, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet generally refer to payment services operated under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device....

 and promotion

Promotion (marketing)

Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix . It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer's purchasing decision....

 solution Cimbal which allows users in the United States to make and accept secure electronic payments through mobile devices and to receive targeted merchant and manufacturer promotional offers.

The payment solution can be used in stores, online, and person to person. The promotion component of Cimbal allows merchants to display nearby users deals on their mobile devices. The payment solution and the promotion solution work with near field communication

Near Field Communication

Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters. It is expected to become a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the United States...

. Alternatively, the user scans a two-dimensional barcode

Barcode

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...

 with a mobile device.

Cimbal is integrated into a merchant point-of-sale

Point of sale

Point of sale or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs...

 system or online shopping cart and requires no terminal

Terminal (telecommunication)

In the context of telecommunications, a terminal is a device which is capable of communicating over a line. Examples of terminals are telephones, fax machines, and network devices - printers and workstations....

 or card reader

Card reader

A card reader is a data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium. Historically, paper or cardboard punched cards were used throughout the first several decades of the computer industry to store information and programs for computer system, and were read by punched card readers...

 hardware. The software works on devices with GPS

Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...

 and a camera, typically a smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

. It is available for the mobile operating system

Mobile operating system

A mobile operating system, also known as a mobile OS, mobile software platform or a handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device or information appliance—similar in principle to an operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux distributions that controls a...

s iOS and Android.

Mobile payment options include transactional accounts, debit card

Debit card

A debit card is a plastic card that provides the cardholder electronic access to his or her bank account/s at a financial institution...

s, or credit card

Credit card

A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...

s as funding

Funding

Funding is the act of providing resources, usually in form of money , or other values such as effort or time , for a project, a person, a business or any other private or public institutions...

. Software security features include multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication, sometimes called strong authentication, is an extension of two-factor authentication. This is the Defense in depth approach of "Security In Layers" applied to authentication. While two-factor authentication only involves exactly two factors, multi-factor...

, end-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption encrypts clear data at source with knowledge of the intended recipient, allowing the encrypted data to travel safely through vulnerable channels End-to-end encryption (E2EE) encrypts clear (red) data at source with knowledge of the intended recipient, allowing the encrypted...

, and dynamic tokenization

Tokenization

Tokenization is the process of breaking a stream of text up into words, phrases, symbols, or other meaningful elements called tokens. The list of tokens becomes input for further processing such as parsing or text mining...

.

History

The service was conceived in 2008 by Christopher Boone and launched in 2010. Cimbal's founders had previously worked together at the image-based search engine Visuvi. After exiting Visuvi, Boone and members of the Visuvi team founded Cimbal.

Their goal was to turn a mobile device into a scanner

Scanner

Scanner may refer to:* WikiScanner, a tool that provides a searchable database of anonymous Wikipedia edits* A personality type described by self-help author Barbara Sher-Technology:* Scanner , for searching for and receiving radio broadcasts...

 capable of reading information-rich barcodes from computer monitors, terminal readers, paper invoices, billboards, newspapers, television, or other mobile devices.

Cimbal is funded by angel investor

Angel investor

An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...

s and the management team. In January 2011, the company has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring's Global 100 award. According to Aite Group, mobile bill payments will reach USD 214 billion in gross dollar volume in 2015.

External links

• Cimbal Inc., a software-based near field communication payment network, announces launch - Payments Journal
• Mobile barcodes power cash transfer as Cimbal launches - GoMo News
• As 2D barcodes gain steam for m-payments, a novel twist emerges - Digital Transactions
• Cimbal launches m-payment system in US - Telecompaper