he Canadians are coming! They want your wireless transaction business! Prepare to expand what you define as the point-of-sale! In 2001, there were 92 million mobile workers - such as plumbers, landscapers, taxi and limousine drivers, outdoor market merchants - in the United States, and there were 100 million cellular phone subscribers.

Also in 2001, the volume of purchases made with debit and credit cards by Americans exceeded $1.3 trillion.

At least a few Canadians are coming, anyway, and this particular group is bringing a technology for mobile payments that gives merchants and businesses a way to accept multiple methods of electronic payments over cellular networks. They say their system will greatly improve the quality - and especially the quantity - of interactions between merchants, customers, cellular providers and financial institutions for increased business opportunities and convenience.

Wildcard Wireless Solutions, Inc., or W2 Solutions, is based in Calgary, Alberta. The company is publicly traded on the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange; a truly global enterprise, it has contracts with developers and manufacturers in South Africa and Asia to produce software, devices and peripherals.

In America, it has partnerships with payment processors and has lined up deals with restaurant franchises for thousands of devices to be used by delivery drivers.

This invasion of sorts has been well planned and plotted out by the management team at W2 Solutions. They saw a need and came up with a way to take advantage of advances in cell phone capabilities, increased reliance on mobile communications and the growing electronic payments market. Their flagship product line, devices called TransAKT, turns digital cell phones into electronic payments terminals and provides a wide range of portable handheld solutions for all types of applications, markets and budgets.

W2 Solutions was founded in 1997. Frederick Coykendall, Vice President of Business Development, said the company has put considerable effort into research and development and has waited to make a move into the U.S. market, the first step of a broader marketing plan to move the company into global mobile commerce.

He said part of the company's strategy was formed based on the differences between the Canadian and American business environments. "Debit in the U.S. is in its infancy in the market, unlike Canada, where we only use debit - no cash and no checks. Canada is the debit capital of the world," he joked.

W2 Solutions focused its efforts on the U.S. market from the beginning for several reasons.

The volume of commerce - and potential for growth in mobile electronic commerce - is lower in Canada than in the U.S.; the market for POS equipment in America is estimated to be 15 times larger than it is in Canada.

American businesses, though, also need to be able to go wireless and need the solutions to make that possible. Because of the continued reliance on paper checks in the U.S., an electronic check reader can be added to the TransAKT device for use strictly in America.

Financial services also operate differently in Canada than in the U.S. "Our sales efforts in the U.S. depend on independent contractors," Coykendall said. "In Canada, five banks control the merchant services industry and froze out the ISO market. The American style was kept out - a lot of Americans came in hoping to sell to that huge debit market. That has changed somewhat since 1998, and the banks are slowly coming around."

Certification with an American processor for the TransAKT took a relatively short time to accomplish. W2 Solutions has been certified with Vital Processing Services since the winter of 2002, and Coykendall said the company is in the process of completing certification with all major U.S. processors.

The first 1,000 devices have been delivered after W2 Solutions recently contracted with Vancouver, B.C.-based Your Choice for Easy Payments Inc. to distribute TransAKT to the nearly 5,000 Domino's Pizza outlets in North America. The TransAKT POS attachments will enable delivery drivers to accept electronic payments at customers' doorsteps, where they conduct most of their business.

The TransAKT POS terminal clips onto Motorola's StarTAC/Timeport PCS and iDEN family of mobile phones. Coykendall said transaction information is sent to payment processors on the CDMA and iDEN cellular networks, unlike other wireless solutions, which run on the CDPD platform.

"We chose the CDMA platform because it has the best coverage in North America," he said.

Coykendall said that many of the CDPD operators are either facing financial difficulties or are closing shop. W2 Solutions' system works separately from those issues, providing a cost-effective, dependable wireless answer for mobile commerce.

The device is PIN pad secured, can read both credit and debit transactions, has voice capability and is smart card capable. Despite its small size - it weighs only 200 grams - Coykendall said, "With all the features it has, it's the Cadillac of wireless POS devices. Everyone who gets one and holds one wants one. It's a neat-looking little unit."

W2 Solutions has thought the entire product and process of using it all the way through; check readers, remote printers, holsters and carrying cases increase the TransAKT's flexibility, portability and functionality. Transaction information can be stored and will batch out automatically.

With the wireless revolution well under way and its foray into the U.S. market a success, W2 Solutions is looking forward, too. It has its sights set beyond the North American continent, to Europe, Asia and beyond. The global mobile market is expected to reach $200 billion generated by 130 million customers conducting 14 billion transactions by 2004.

W2 Solutions' goal is to expand the boundaries of where transactions can take place beyond the traditional definition of the point-of-sale. For merchants and businesses, that means being able to create and capture new sales anywhere.