Merchants are always looking for new channels through which to market their products to potential customers. Marketing channels such as newspapers; magazines; television; radio; posters; signs on bus-stop benches; signs on taxi cabs, buses, and other forms of public transportation; and so-called “junk mail” have been in wide use for many years. One marketing channel that has come along more recently is the portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web (the “Web”).
The Internet also supports a wide variety of electronic-commerce systems, including secure wireless-payment systems that permit a user to pay for goods and services using a mobile device such as a cellular telephone. Though such mobile electronic-commerce systems are increasing in popularity, such systems have significant untapped potential as channels through which marketing messages can be transmitted to mobile-device users.