HEADLINE NEWS
Contactless-Mobile Payments Coming; Everyone Wants a Cut
Smartphones that can be waved in front of a merchant terminal to buy everything from groceries to gas aren’t widely available yet, but that’s not stopping phone companies, credit card giants, banks, loyalty programs and even Google from fighting for a piece of the action. (Money-Canada)
The global value of mobile payments reached an estimated $170 billion last year, according to Juniper Research, and could grow to $630 billion by 2014 as new phones are designed to bypass the Internet to directly charge or debit an account.
Just as the online shopping boom saw the rise of companies like PayPal, the advent of mobile proximity payments will could see telecommunications companies take a front seat in the payments industry for the first time.
In the U.S. telecom rivals AT&T and Verizon have reportedly teamed up to find ways to replace traditional plastic credit cards with smartphones.
In Canada, Rogers Communications has been working toward mobile proximity payments for five years, primarily through the GSM Association’s "Pay-Buy Mobile" initiative.
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