Jun
19
2010
We are an increasingly mobile society that wants access to everything at our fingertips while on the go, including credit card processing payment options. However, mobile credit card processing is a new frontier that is not quite yet “settled.”
What are the Mobile Shopping Statistics?
The Nelson company revealed in a 2009 report that the number of consumers using mobile devices to shop online increased from 42.5 million to 56.9 million. In addition, teens aged 13-17 and those over 65 were the greatest growth users. As bandwidth continues to increase, these numbers are expected to climb, and that is something merchants should pay attention to when choosing payment solutions.
How This Impacts the Payments Industry
The explosion in mobile payments does offer up a new potential target market for sales people, as well as for companies creating payment process technology. As devices get smarter and more dynamic, there are more options
available to merchants who may want to include them as part of their payment processing package. However, the banking and credit card industries are not willing to wade too far into the realm of mobile payments just yet.
When it comes down to it, there are lots of opportunities available to create a new mobile merchant processing platform, but who will create the infrastructure for phones that enable mobile payments in brick and mortar stores and online? In addition, how can payment processors create packages for merchants that make mobile payments worthwhile?
Next Steps for Mobile Payments
One way is to encourage phone carriers to participate in creating the infrastructure. Convenience, security and ease of use are all important features for customers, and must be considered in development.
There must also be an incentive for sales people to offer mobile payments, meaning it must be part of the overall business model for payment processors to implement and deploy. Currently, no model exists. Now the question is, who
creates a whole mobile website interface to manage payments? Does the phone need to be designed around mobile
payments? Only time will tell.
