Standardizing the Mobile Payments Platform
As you have probably seen from my recent blog entries there is a lot happening in the mobile space in financial services. But with this activity I have some concerns. There are is a tremendous amount of point solutions out there. There are little or no standards in the banking community for mobile payments.
For example, I've talked to people from all around the world about what technologies they use. I've seen:
- CardSpace
- IVR
- RFID
- SMS
- SMTP
- Custom Applications of all sorts
This will ultimately hinder mainstream adoption because it breaks down the consumer to consumer (C2C) model if banks do not interoperable.
There is some good news though, the Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, which is owned by 21 large U.S. banking companies, and the Financial Services Technology Consortium, an industry-backed research organization, are expected to announce plans today to conduct a joint two-month study of mobile banking standards.
Thirteen banking companies have agreed to participate - ABN Amro Holding NV's LaSalle Bank Corp., Bank of America Corp., BB&T Corp., Citigroup Inc., Comerica Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, KeyCorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., National City Corp., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp, Wachovia Corp., and Wells Fargo & Co.
However, some of the leaders in the developing mobile payments market, are bank-backed organizations such as Visa International and nonbank competitors such as eBay Inc.'s PayPal Inc. of San Jose.
You can find more information on the American Banker site on this topic.