FROM THE WEB: ‘Three Trends That Will Make A Difference In Mobile Payments’ Alberto Jimenez, IBM

The director of mobile payments at IBM, Alberto Jimenez, has written an insightful article on TechCrunch, detailing the three trends which will make a difference in mobile payments.

Jimenez says that those within the industry have characterised the growth of mobile payments as slow and “mostly disappointing” – not reaching the heights many expected five years ago.

However he says there are signs that mobile payments – which are expected to top around $720bn by 2017, according to Gartner – now have a viable path to scale.

The IBM director says these three trends are: offering added services before and after transactions, the broad usage of cards on file, and increased security, following high-profile data breaches.

He says:

“When debating the future of mobile payments, there’s a fairly common argument that “it is not about payments, it’s about commerce.” This is the belief that mobile payments adoption isn’t just about the actual movement of funds, but more so focused on the broader mobile shopping experience.

“For the most part, this argument is accurate. However, it misses the point of payments as the enabling platform for monetizing new retail industry engagement services – commerce – in an increasingly mobile world. These two ideas don’t conflict with one another; but secure, frictionless payments, as a standalone capability is simply necessary to succeed in the emerging retail industry reality.”

GDI recently released our latest report on mobile payments, sponsored by Infobip, which you can download for free here.

Read Jimenez’s article here.