Mobile payments


At a market stall in London’s Leather Lane last year, Suzi Perry made the fi rst contactless mobile payment via a Quick Tap handset launched by Orange. This month, Orange and Barclaycard announced the fi rst Android smartphone compatible with the Quick Tap service. Customers choosing the Orange Samsung Galaxy SIII can load money securely on to their handset using any UK MasterCard or Visa debit or credit card


The opportunity for mobile operators


John Boniface believes that network operators can offer important value-adds that could ensure take-up of mobile money and long-lasting revenues


plots in what promises to be the next big thing intersecting the banking, telecoms and technol- ogy sectors. And yet the very organizations that are guaranteed to be involved – the mobile net- work operators who own the infrastructure and


R About the author


John Boniface is a telecoms consultant with IPL, an IT services company specializing in solutions and consultancy


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eal-estate in the mobile payments area is hotly sought after. Firms from nu- merous sectors are rushing to snap up


client relationships on which the ‘mobile’ part is based – could end up seeing little or no ben- efi t if others are allowed to steal a march and consolidate their lead. T e mobile payments marketplace is one of


the fastest moving, with new developments oc- curring almost weekly. Mobile network opera- tors around the world are vying to claim a piece of the action. In the Netherlands, for example, Vodafone,


KPN and the major banks are pressing ahead with the Sixpack mobile payments initiative. In the UK, Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2


are having their Project Oscar venture


reviewed by the European Commission at the time of writing. In the meantime, O2


has


launched its own Wallet service, which enables mobile phone users to send money to one an- other, much like Barclays PingIt, and also to shop online at a range of popular outlets. T e future shape of the mobile networks’ off erings


Payment space All these systems will make use of the mo- bile operators’ networks (and in some cases, handsets). But they don’t return any value to the network operators: the payments passing


LAND mobile September 2012


will depend to a large extent on the outcome of the Project Oscar review, but it is clear they intend to play a major part. T ey face stiff competition, though. Google


has already rolled out its mobile Wallet system in the USA and looks set to expand it in the UK soon, while Apple has been granted a pat- ent that shows it too has plans to move into the mobile payments space. But perhaps the biggest competition in the UK is from the Pay- ments Council, which has started building a database to link mobile numbers to bank ac- counts. T is will be a network-agnostic way for people to make payments directly from their bank accounts using their mobiles.


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