Payment doesn’t get much easier than swiping a credit card, but researchers are nonetheless predicting American consumers will switch to paying with smartphones over the course of the next decade. The Pew Research Center surveyed 1,000 respondents and found that more than half think mobile payments will be very widespread by 2020. The poll was an opt-in, non-random survey so the results may be biased in favor of early adopters.
Right now, the allure of mobile payments may be stronger for wireless carriers and retailers than for consumers. Carriers see a new way to monetize subscribers by offering a new service. Isis, a joint venture formed by AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, charges banks a service fee each time a user loads a bank payment card into their smartphone. The Isis mobile payments platform relies on near field communication (NFC) chips in smartphones that communicate with contactless point of sale terminals. Isis will launch this summer in two test markets, Austin and Salt Lake City.
Google is offering its own mobile payments solution in Google Wallet. Google Wallet is a joint venture between Google, Citibank, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint. Consumers will be able to use Android phones to make payments using near field communication, the same technology that Isis uses. Payments can be processed using a Citibank Mastercard, or using a Google prepaid card, which would eliminate the bank from the payment process.
