11. Stefan Roever
Brokat
Job description: President and CEO
Age, Nationality: 35, German
Web address: www.brokat.com
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Can Roever work his magic twice? First he built Brokat from a small start-up into a leading provider of Internet banking software by offering a unified view of customer-account information. Now he is targeting mobile operators, promising them secure software that turns cellular phones into electronic wallets. Brokat's new software will allow mobile phone users to choose what type of payment method — credit card, direct debit or prepaid accounts — they want their phone to support. Following a one-off registration process, mobile users will be able to automatically pay for a variety of products and services without having to punch in their name or credit card details. Roever is betting that serving as an account aggregator for people's bills — and earning handling fees or slices of transactions — will mean a new revenue stream for operators desperate to recoup investments in mobile licenses.
The vision thing: "There is nothing holding back the use of phones as personal signature devices."
Forward spin: Rolling out the infrastructure for secure mobile payments won't be easy.
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