If you take a look around, mobile banking is currently in all facets of life – from Google’s (News - Alert) plans to unveil a mobile payment platform to Square’s digital wallet functions to Starbucks’ mobile payment apps. But there still remains one company that is paving the way for the mobile banking space, Tyfone – a leader in mobile financial services.

Founded in 2004, the Portland, Ore.-based company boasts turnkey infrastructure designed to promote device and carrier independence for mobile financial services for the world’s leading organizations. 

According to Tyfone CTO and Co-Founder Dr. Siva G. Narendra, 30 years ago, before there was Web technology, there was Viewtron, which was a network controlled electronic information system capable of online commerce. However, online e-commerce flourished only after the advent of Web technology that allowed for freedom of interaction between any consumer, merchant and payment service provider via any network operator, he said.

“Today mobile devices are at the heart of commerce, because for the first time a networked device in your hands has relevance for both online and offline at POS commerce, since it is ‘always’ with you and ‘always’ connected,” Dr. Siva G. Narendra, CTO and co-founder of Tyfone, told TMCnet in a recent interview.

“Mobile devices therefore will address both online retail that is currently at five percent and offline at POS retail which is the remaining 95 percent,” he added. “If a device addresses 100 percent of retail commerce then security and identity management will be extremely critical and it has to be provided by a hardware called Secure Element, such as a SmartCard. Tyfone set out to build a neutral container technology for a SmartCard in mobile channel that will bring to the online and offline point-of-sale commerce, what Web technology brought to the online e-commerce through networked PCs.”

For the past seven years, Tyfone has honed its mission statement of connecting money and mobility and then connecting identity and mobility in a neutral container.

In a market rife with mobile banking providers, Tyfone distinguishes itself by being the only company that is capable of starting with mobile banking for online transactions with software authentication and ending with mobile payments for offline at POS transactions. This all in one infrastructure, which can be used on any device, can also enable online transactions with hardware security on any device.

As a leader in the mobile banking space, Tyfone certainly has its finger on the pulse when it comes to trends and one of the biggest things happening in the space right now is that security is at the top of the mind for online transactions and offline at POS transactions. But, according to Narendra, Tyfone is uniquely placed to enable it.

Tyfone has also picked up on another trend as well, according to Narendra.

“The noise, until recently, was about mobile banking and NFC (short for Near Field Communications), which is simply a communications protocol,” Narendra said of the latest trend. “Now everyone is talking about Secure Elements, which do just that, secure data. Your account information still needs to be stored somewhere...and a Secure Element chip is the most secure means of doing so.”

The industry has also seen more issuers looking into the mobile channel closely, especially mid-tier financial institutions including credit unions and community banks that are looking at this channel as an important way to reach their customers near and far, according to Narendra.

So what can the mobile banking industry expect from Tyfone in the rest of 2011?

“Tyfone is well positioned in this space with unique offerings of mobile services, technology solution, and intellectual property including patents,” Narendra said. “Tyfone services run on a single solution which is based on Tyfone IP.  Tyfone is a company that licenses any one of (a) services to issuers, (b) technology solutions to system integrators that sell to issuers and (c) patents to manufacturers who in turn sell to system integrators.”