Not m-payments again!
Mobile payments must be the most heralded innovation of all time. We have been talking about it for 10 years or more, and still don’t have a reliable definition, let alone a clear, widely-accepted process flow.
Mobile payments' can be:
- A text/SMS direction to a stored value service;
- A transfer or top-up of airtime (air minutes) between mobile accounts;
- A charge on your phone bill;
- A contactless (near field communication or NFC) card transaction initiated from a mobile device, either by a chip that resides inside the phone or a sticker attached to the outside;
- An internet payment executed from the mobile using any number of web-based services; or
- An app-driven service for 3- and 4-G phones using a range of wireless connections.
All of these are in operation, somewhere in the world. Do we need them all here in Australia? Probably not, but in the vibrant world of retail payment innovations, that's probably the wrong question. Rather, we might ask "which one(s) can win in an open, competitive marketplace?"