You may agree, anything connected with mobile instrument is virtually a craze in the market place.
It all started with mobile phones. They almost killed the thriving landline or fixed phone industry. Even today the landline/fixed phone industry is to yet over this shock and its displacement.
One may find in any country – whether ‘fully or less or least’ developed country – mobile phones have become a personal gadget for personal communication.
Having reached the status of ‘must have’ personal gadget, the mobile phones have started making inroads into other established industries as well
And even within mobile industry the focus is on the idea to pack as many uses as possible in a single device
Mobile Money – the practice of banking and transferring money through mobile phones – has made its impact – on banking – and it has become a reality. M-Pesa in Kenya, M-Paisa in Afghanistan, Easypaisa in Pakistan and ZPesa in Tanzania.
Now the focus is shifting to Mobile Payments – using mobile instruments for meeting payment obligations.
I was wondering whether any joint offering is being pursued by the payment industry players with the mobile industry.
I can visualize a possibility wherein Mobile Cards could be set in place, which can obviate the need to carry the plastic card and the mobile unit can authenticate the card payment with a password from the user.
Functionally, the combination could work wonders in the sense that the Mobile Card could virtually handle the entire payment volumes in the market place. Am I exaggerating too much?
Mobile Cards could be offered initially to all post paid customers with suitable limits fixed for the user. The mobile user could operate within the pre-set joint limit – both for the talk time and other payment obligations.
The mobile user may also be facilitated to transfer his/her credit cards limits (issued by other organizations like Visa, MasterCard, etc) to the mobile cards.
Do you agree now that this may work?
Smart industry competitors do not attempt to fight the change; they embrace it.
Well. We need to pursue simple solutions to simple problems. Unfortunately, technologists tend to provide great capabilities first and solutions second, whereas we mortals would prefer solutions first, and capabilities second!
Surely, yesterday it was about technology. Today it is about markets and mortals.