Mobile Payments Coming ... Again

Every couple years, I see a concept video and a story about the impending explosion of mobile payments. It hasn't happened yet - at least in the US, but maybe this is the right time and this ATT-Verizon joint venture will make it happen.

AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones - Bloomberg:

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said.

The partnership, which also includes Deutsche Telekom AG unit T-Mobile USA, may work with Discover Financial Services and Barclays Plc to test a system at stores in Atlanta and three other U.S. cities that would let a consumer pay with the contactless wave of a smartphone, the people said. The carriers have been searching for a chief executive officer.

The trial would be the carriers’ biggest effort to spur mobile payments in the U.S. and supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in American wallets. Smartphones have encroached on tasks ranging from Web browsing to street navigation and now may help the phone companies compete with San Francisco-based Visa and MasterCard, the world’s biggest payments networks.

Consumers, particularly younger consumers are driving this:

Mobile technology for banking and payments is reaching “a tipping point,” with younger consumers leading the way, Mercatus LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm, said in a June 7 study. More than half of U.S. consumers, and almost 80 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34, will use mobile financial services within five years, according to Mercatus.

“Rapid and broad-based consumer adoption of mobile financial services is imminent” as people rely on their phones to manage every aspect of their lives, said Mercatus Managing Partner Bob Hedges, former head of retail banking and payments at Fleet Bank, in an interview. “Consumers want it to happen.”

The credit card companies are not standing still either.

MasterCard and Visa have been investing in their own mobile solutions. Visa and Richardson, Texas-based DeviceFidelity, have developed technology that can transform phones consumers carry today, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, into a payment device that can store multiple card accounts, said Bill Gajda, head of mobile for Visa.