Mobile Gets Moving

There's lots of action on mobile payment platforms at the moment with numerous parties all trying to offer the ability to make and take payments simply and quickly on smart phones and tablets. Google Wallet, Square and Isis in particular are doing an excellent job of selling the benefits on their sites and they potentially include far more than just payments (hence the Wallet moniker).

Imagine a none-too-distant future (or in fact very-near present) in which you can use your phone for setting up tabs at bars and cafes, redeeming discount vouchers and gift cards, browsing menus, storing receipts and loyalty points and validating tickets and boarding passes.

Why's this a good thing? Well on the payment side faster checkouts means more sales but the products also open up a whole world of other opportunities: peer-to-peer exchange (reg group purchases or even gambling), loyalty marketing, social integration, more powerful POS analytics and so on etc forever and ever amen.

However, with a lot of large companies jostling for a slice of the pie it's not progressing without some confusion and difficulty: Paypal are suing Google over IP theft, ISIS (a 3-way venture between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) wasn't going anywhere with just Discovery but have since signed up Visa, Mastercard and American Express, Visa has purchased their own system, Microsoft are working on their own product and there's rumours Apple are working on one too.

As always though there are some naysayers, with the main criticisms focusing on the cost of card processing fees and privacy concerns. My main concern is that it may lead to the demise of Moneygami.