While carriers and banks discuss mobile payment business models in Brazil, without anyone taking an m-payment leadership role, companies around the globe may launch initiatives that could deeply impact the space. “The recent launch of Google Wallet, the Android operating system turns smartphones into electronic wallets, allowing you to make payments and get discounts by bringing the phone to a point of sale,” noted GFT Brazil country manager Marco Santos. “If Apple wants to, company could deploy m-payment through its iTunes, since it has millions of credit-card numbers,” added Freeddom’s CEO and founder Cicero Torteli.
Those initiatives are examples apart from how banks or carriers plan to launch m-payment services. Google Wallet is the most promising attempt to conquer the mobile payment market now, says Santos. “This model is a threat to banks, who may lose contact with their customers and partners, becoming a provider of final transactions of Internet providers.”
Santos believes that Google’s success will be based on the fact that it brought together partners of the main sectors for implementation of mobile payment and has a strong alliance with financial service industry.
Regarding the m-payment business model, Santos defends that, since the m-payment sector is complex, it will focus on customers who have bank accounts and postpaid mobile phones. “It will be focused on a select group.”
And what if the bank becomes only the official transactional manager? “The great opportunity for financial institutions is to combine mobile payment with contextual information provided by the device, such as where the user is performing the transaction,” said Santos, justifying that this would serve to enhance the security of individual transactions, which would be valuable to the user and be a value added service to the bank.
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