Mercator Advisory Group was recently featured on the PBSNightly Business Report, addressing the topic of mobile payments. The show canbe found viewed here.
The question at hand is “There are so many people working inmobile payments – why hasn’t anyone ‘solved’ it?”
The short answer is “because not every ‘mobile payments’company is working on the same problems.”
One group is focused on enabling consumers to make paymentswith a mobile device. And within this cohort some companies like Apple, MCX,and SoftCard are focused on the in-store experience – others like PayPal havemade more progress enabling e-commerce from mobile devices.
Another group is working to facilitate greater acceptance ofmobile payments. Again there is a distinction between POS and e-commercetransactions. Square, which is often brought into the mobile paymentsdiscussion, enables small retailers to accept payments using a mobile device asa point of sale terminal. Meanwhile, Stripe, Braintree and others facilitatepayment acceptance in digital channels, which are increasingly mobile.
All of these companies are working in “mobile payments” butthat doesn’t mean they have similar products. Some companies are actually enjoyingtremendous success in their particular expertise – Square with mobile POS,PayPal with mobile e-commerce, and Stripe with digital acceptance.
Much less progress has been made in the realm of mobilepayments at the physical POS however. And it’s still too early to say who isgoing to have the biggest impact. Apple has relationships with all the rightpayments stakeholders to deliver a compelling product. Meanwhile, PayPal hasmore than a decade of experience operating in the payments industry and alreadyprocesses tens of billions of dollars in mobile payments annually.Alternatively, another new entrant could still emerge.
Overview by Michael Misasi, Analyst of Credit Advisory Service