Are Mobile Payments About to Become a Reality?

With the announcement that US Carriers have formed an alliance to deliver Mobile Payments and a similar deal taking place in Germany, is cash finally entering it's death throes?

The news is that US carriers AT&T,T-Mobile and Verizon have joined forced to develop a nationwide mCommerce network that will utilise technologies such as NFC and Smartphone devices to allow payments to be made by swishing a mobile phone close to a payments receiver.  Think of the Barclaycard ads where they guy flies down the waterslide on his daily commute home and pauses ever so briefly to pass his bit of plastic over a sensor to pay for a banana he had a sudden craving for.  This is the same thing except you will wave your phone and not have to carry another bit of plastic around with you.

The benefit of phone over plastic in this case is the richer interface.  The phone can act as a vessel in which to store financial information, such as the credentials for several credit cards or other payment methods.  This means finally you don't need multiple cards in your wallet.  In fact you don't need your wallet because in theory you'll be able to securely store your driving license and other ID's on your phone and it can be used for small cash payments from your current account or other pre-pay account.

For larger transactions, the phone could interact with the reader asking you to enter a PIN code on the phone's number pad as extra verification, or even maybe scanning your finger print or retina using the camera functionality...  Star Trek eat your heart out.

Once the transaction is complete, the phone will allow you to manage your histories, view recent transactions, forward receipts to a wifi printer, move money between accounts etc.

You'll also be able to receive marketing messages and, more importantly, special offers and loyalty discounts, so without even thinking about it you'll be collecting loyalty points and redeeming discount vouchers...

The US solution, which has been termed Isis, will start to appear in "key geographic markets" (that means New York, LA and DC probably) in the next 18 months or so. Unsurprisingly, NFC innovator Barclaycard is expected to be the first issuer on the network followed by offers from other financial and / or retail institutions.


Any chance of a similar level of co-operation in the UK so we can finally take advantage of this great innovation that has been around for years already but despite it having the potential to radically enhance our daily lives has so far stayed firmly in the lab or, at best, on bits of plastic used to get us onto the Tube?