UK consumers reject mobile payments
Security is a major hindrance, says study Written by Angelica Mari, 23 May 2008
I must admit I am confused about the potential for the Mobile Phone becoming a mechanisms we employ when making payments. If I was simply to take the reaction in an article recently published on VNUNET.com, I would worry. Yet in other articles and industry analyst speculate that by 2012 we will evolve to employing the mobile phone as our i means of payment. As I suggested in a previous posting there is still a lot of work to do in developing the business case.
Yes Vivotech reports phenomenal numbers of devices installed and Inside Contactless talks about the significant numbers of contactless cards deployed. Standards are emerging and I am sure that EMVCO will develop the necessary security to protect Mobile Payments (assuming you don’t lose your phone). Then there is the interesting reality that there are more mobile phone users than there are people with Bank accounts. Micro-finance and developing worlds are embracing work like what Vodaphone is doing to drive payments in the P2P space to the mobile device. Yet when will all of these experiments and trials prove that the key issues of security and stakeholder profit are there?