Hi Peter, I saw some of your articles and they were quite interesting. Regarding obstacles to mobile payments there is a virtual ocean of opinions. And some really huge amounts of religion as well... WHAT OPERATOR? Personally I have problems with the "Operator-oriented" view of m-commerce and m-payments. For payments we already have established "operators" in the form of banks. If I must have a certain operator for paying a certain merchant, mobile payments is likely to be stuck in its current pitiful state. I doubt that merchants are particularly interested in getting paid through new channels. And consumers will get unhappy about splitting their scarce money resources into yet another bank look-alike. This is a bit unfortunate for the mobile-system manufacturers who still hope in vain that Vodaphone, Telia etc. will pay for such systems. IMO they will not even be in the loop when WAP 2.0 and GPRS are established as then operators have little to offer but capacity and availability. I.e. the head- set manufacturers must supply the basics but that's about all. IT MUST BE STANDARD! This urge to "be different" than others is also no real boon, as payments (as any other ubiquitous service) must be "standard" in order to reach a critical mass. As the PC-industry has clearly shown there is no need to create incompatible hardware to thrive as a manufacturer! Actually I don't even believe in proprietary (or rather unique) hand-set operating systems either, in the same way as Windows makes 90% of the desktop market compatible (sort of...), phone makers must support a single major OS. I bet it will be some kind of Windows, but with Java added. And the terminals must support automatic updates as well otherwise the customer-base will soon become too fragmented for reliable usage. TALKING TO THE POS-TERMINAL Another problem is that some head-set manufacturers like Ericsson believes that Bluetooth will replace IR as a the preferred terminal-to-POS connector. Question: How in the world will such a system and GUI work as there [usually] is no previous "relation" between the terminal and POS (and further taking in consideration that Bluetooth is not directed so there could even be *multiple* POS terminals in "payment-state" within radio-distance)? My guess is that the eventual solution (after years of struggling pilots using various more or less crummy solutions), is to use a "Combo", where IR is used for point-and-shoot and Bluetooth is used for carrying out the transaction. The reason for this arrangement is that point-and-shoot is required for (any) ad-hoc temporary connection for both convenience and security reasons. However, it would be stupid not to use Bluetooth (which is likely to be a standard feature in all mobile devices), for the rest of the transaction as it gives the user the ability to move the phone closer to his/her eyes using any angle which is important when critical credit-card selection, PIN-code issuing, and payment request messages are to be viewed and executed. The latter also applies to uses that emulate smart cards in general, like physical access control and PC-based operation (where the phone/PDA replaces the card reader and card). NOT SO SMART - MAYBE I do therefore not believe that ordinary smart cards will ever be a major item as the mobile phone will replace most of these in just 3-5 years. At least those that represent personal (non- transferable) resources. My intention of sending this to you is just to get some feedback on this. You may not agree on all things, but as you say there are no sure things! Regards Anders Rundgren X-OBI http://www.x-obi.com
