Arkansas.gov’s secure mobile payment service has quickly become one of the state’s most popular smartphone-enabled features.

Since launching earlier this year, http://arkansas.gov/m has processed more than 2,000 payments for a variety of state and local government services. Arkansas became the first state to provide secure payment processing specifically for smartphone users, and the Arkansas.gov mobile Web site is part of the official state Web site. 

“There is pent-up demand for mobile services, and we’re eager to build many more mobile solutions that make it easier for citizens to interact with Arkansas government,” said Janet Grard, general manager at the Information Network of Arkansas, Little Rock. “We believe the strong early adoption of Arkansas.gov mobile payments is driven in part by a shift in usage patterns.

“The market research we’ve conducted aligns with what we’re hearing from citizens—namely, a growing number of people we serve are dropping their landlines and laptops in favor of using a smartphone for all of their communication needs,” she said.

“One reason mobile payments have been so well-received is because a segment of our user base is using smartphones for all of their digital communication, including making a payment to government.”

Arkansas.gov is the official Web site of the state of Arkansas and a service of the Information Network of Arkansas.

The Information Network of Arkansas is a collaborative effort between the state of Arkansas and Arkansas Information Consortium that helps state government entities Web-enable their information services.

Arkansas Information Consortium is part of egovernment firm NIC’s family of companies.

NIC is a provider of official government Web sites, online services, and secure payment processing platforms.

Mobile payments growing
Citizens can submit secure mobile payments via any smartphone device for inmate trust account deposits, probation and parole supervision and restitution payments, and property tax payments in 26 counties across the state.

The Department of Correction’s inmate deposit service has been especially popular, with more than 1,300 secure payments processed so far.

Ms. Grard said she has found that an increasing number of citizens are using smartphones as their primary communication channel.

For many users, their only connection to the Internet is their mobile smartphone.

Ms. Grard said she is very pleased with the high number of mobile transactions processed and is excited to offer optimized mobile payments for several of Arkansas.gov’s high-volume services.

Arkansas.gov’s mobile applications provide a secure option for users to access government services and are available on all smartphone operating systems, including Apple’s iPhone, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and HP’s Palm WebOS.

The Arkansas.gov mobile suite includes several innovative features.

The Arkansas Secretary of State’s Voter View application has supported more than 55,000 visits and uses mapping mashups to allow registered voters to find their polling location for any primary, runoff or general election.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s mobile Game Check service provides real-time game tagging on mobile devices including a separate native iPhone application available in the iTunes App Store.

The state also provides mobile smartphone and iPhone applications for the Arkansas.gov Web site and the Recovery.Arkansas.gov stimulus funding search. 

Arkansas.gov’s mobile applications will render on any smartphone device based on the specific device’s screen size and capabilities, which makes government information and services even more convenient and accessible.

All credit card mobile payments are processed through Arkansas.gov’s secure transaction system.

“Mobile payments are yet another way we can make state government information available to Arkansans,” Ms. Grard said. “This fits into Arkansas.gov’s broader strategy of making it easy to interact with government by creating ubiquitous, user-friendly services.”

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Commerce Daily