Types and volume of mobile phone transactions at point of sale are expanding everywhere. Raises key
by Kylene Casanova
New initiatives for mobile phone payments are announced every day, here are some recent ones:
- Visa and MasterCard announced their standards and structure of their e-wallets
- ANZ and Barclays now have live mobile phone applications for businesses to collect payments from mobiles
- Facebook has moved to simplify the way developers charge for their mobile Web apps with the launch of a direct-to-carrier billing system
- Apple, who has 400 million credit and debit card accounts on their App Store, have just announced their first step into enabling the iPhone to make payments. The Passbook App which will be released in the Autumn, puts things like store cards, airline boarding passes and concert tickets into a simple wallet display on the device screen
- HSBC launched an Indian m-payments service in May 2012 for corporates
- GlobalCollect, the payment services provider, recently signed an agreement with the US on-line mobile payments company Boku as its global mobile payments partner to enable on-line merchants to accept mobile payments at checkout
- Citi has just formed a global partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to boost financial inclusion in developing countries through mobile money technology.
The success of Square, the mobile phone payment system in USA (see Figure) which already processes US$5bn+/year, shows that consumers and small businesses really like making and accepting payments via the mobile phone.
Square
Source & Copyright©2012 - Square
Consumers readily accept using their mobile phones for many different things, e.g. RBS have just added ATM cash dispensing to their mobile banking App.
Mobile phone payments and receipts are coming; this is just the beginning of the revolution. The question corporate treasurers and finance directors need to ask themselves is: How can we simply and elegantly incorporate payments to and receipts from mobile phones into our systems and services? If you don't someone else will.
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