Report: ‘Hidden controls’ holding back mobile wallet progress
10 July, 2012
category: NFC
The development of mobile wallet technology is being held back by a number of “hidden controls” that remain largely unexplored in the public domain, according to new research from Mobey Forum, the global bank-driven industry association for mobile financial services.
Mobey Forum’s latest white paper, “Mobile Wallet: The Hidden Controls,” examines the external forces that will dictate how consumers and merchants engage with mobile wallet technology during their day-to-day activities. The paper defines and analyzes a series of hidden control points, which map the commercial battlegrounds where stakeholders will vie to influence the adoption of mobile wallet technology.
“As the first wave of mobile wallet solutions start to appear, the market’s attention remains fixed on mobile wallet apps and the devices where they reside,” explained Amir Tabakovic, chair of the Mobey Forum Mobile Wallet Task Force. “We think this is unbalanced – the mobile wallet ecosystem is highly complex and its component parts are interdependent. The market’s failure to adequately consider the external forces influencing the mobile wallet is preventing the technology from fulfilling its full potential.”
“Mobey Forum has already established that providing an ‘easy way to pay’ will not be enough to guarantee mass market adoption of the mobile wallet,” added Sirpa Nordlund, executive director of Mobey Forum. “Consumers must be lured away from their conventional wallets by the promise of some form of unique, additional value in return for agreeing to change their behavior. But how will these new value oriented services integrate with the payment systems? What will motivate merchants to accept mobile wallet payments and what form will the acceptance infrastructure take? What are the integration issues? These are the kinds of questions we address in our latest paper.”
The report is the third in a series of mobile wallet white papers from Mobey Forum, which can be downloaded for free here.
Contributors to the the white paper include: Accarda, Bank of America, BNP Paribas Danske Bank, DNB Bank, European Payments Council, Evry, Luup, Nets, Nokia, Oberthur, PostFinance, SAP, Tieto, Unwire and Vocalink.