circa 2009
Mobile payments what is it? To start five different flavors:
- P2P
- International remittance processing - mobile money transfer
- ebanking: images, balances, customer service, deposits, payments and transfers
- mobile POS
- contactless
Mobile Banking - Simply a WAP or smart phone browser based implementation of the existing ebanking suite, to start. There is so much that has to be thought about as the other enabling features are implemented. SMS alerts are obvious first steps. Retention has to be built in as an objective. Know your customer becomes a marketable service. two and three factor authentication becomes practical.
Mobile Loyalty - The sticky factor
- coupons
- geo-location
- rewards and points
- discounts
- offers
- alerts
Stakeholders are the challenge - mobile network operators, carriers, hand set distributors and manufactures, financial institutions, banks, merchants, ISOs, processors, agents ... .
The business case, like so many others, is dependent on consumer uptake and existing reports suggest that the cell phone user gets these features and will embrace; as long as costs are low, functionality is user friendly, input is intuitive and easy, and setup is effortless.
