The future of mobile payments seems to be the calm before the storm. The market is nearly saturated with companies and proposals, but the lack of common standards towards this brings the whole mobile payment initiative under a cloud of suspicion.
The biggest selling point of mobile payments is simplicity. The seamlessly effort, the popularity of the process of no buying physically, along with the time users are spending on their phones and tablets, make mobile payments a powerful tool to be consider for the future. Precisely one most repeated catchphrase in the industry, including credit card companies, is that for mobile payments to take-off, they have to be simpler to use than a card. Or at least, provide some added value. So if you don’t want to take the phone out of your pocket you don’t have to, in order to be charged, this is the step forward.
In the UK, during the first quarter of this year 13% of people in the UK used their mobile devices to buy and it is expected that the m -commerce will generate 1,500 million pounds at the end of 2017 as the time users spend on mobile devices is increasing steadily, according to the latest news in mobile marketing. The purchases started with digital products such as software and applications, but there are indications that the trend will spread to other products and services.
Further, a recent study by JP Morgan on the status of business mobile payments revealed that, although its size is still not significant, is growing rapidly, thanks largely to the solutions promoted by the international card payment such as Visa and MasterCard.
As for the different emerging systems, the market is nearly saturated with companies of all sizes, from start- ups to established companies fighting for supremacy, but the lack of common standards and broad acceptance, makes it difficult for a solution to acquire a prominent position.
Companies like Visa and Samsung, which since 2005 have been a pioneer in NFC devices, also recently announced a global partnership that combines the expertise of the Visa payment systems, with Samsung's leadership in the field of mobile technology. It is a partnership that has the potential to significantly accelerate worldwide the possibility to pay with mobile devices. Under the agreement, the financial institutions are planning to launch mobile payment programs may use the Service Provisioning Mobile Visa (Visa Mobile Provisioning Service ) to safely download information on payment accounts endowed Samsung devices NFC technology .
However, the new proposals need more advances regarding technological developments if we are to achieve this goal. Beacon PayPal’s announcement last week is one of those indicators. A system that allows consumers to register automatically in stores, instead of using NFC technology, PayPal uses Bluetooth to transmit information so that those consumers can pay hands free. That is the advancement in the service and the potential appeal compared to credit cards. PayPal’s gamble on the phone is simply based on the volume of purchases through this device that recorded the company 14,000 million last year and for 2013 , this figure could reach 20,000 million.
Nor could they miss the appointment some social networks like Facebook, which by no coincidence, is intended to overshadow PayPal mobile payments. The initiative would be to use the social login Facebook to streamline the payment process across mobile devices, with the previous linkage Facebook account to bank the user. This would be a step forward in Facebook connect, the system that many sites already use as default log path. The challenge would be how to implement the system in the rest of solutions that can be standardized and adapted in stores offline and thoroughly analyze how far it is guaranteed the safety of its users.
On the other hand, the new fingerprint reader for iPhone that Apple unveiled last week is also a good indicator of this trend, as the mobile is becoming a highly secure device to make payments, which is quite linked conceptually iTunes. Users are already used to shop there.
Another example is Square, which for a while allows consumers walk into a store and basically automatically send your information to the box. After a simple message allows a customer to pay without having to queue or go through the physical process of checking out. The result obtained initiatives such as PayPal or Square will give us the key to knowing more about the future of mobile payments.
What is clear is that the future of mobile payments is promising and very late may not consolidate more practical proposals and really effective.