Do you think it would be possible to go a week, or even a day without using your cell phone? It’s OK, neither do I. And now it may become even harder to put down those convenient little devices down. In an age where applications can do everything from providing weather updates to purchasing concert tickets it seems fitting that the next logical step would be to enable your phone to make payment transactions for pretty much everything. In a very surprising alliance, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless are currently joining forces with a company called Isis in an attempt to do just that.
The Isis network has over 200 million customers and is currently teaming up with Barclaycard as well as the previously mentioned mobile giants to create a contactless payment system for smartphones. It would be set up very similarly to a system like Blink, which allows customers to simply wave the device over a transaction point and have the payment take place automatically. This isn’t the first attempt at contactless credit card payments via mobile phones, - In fact Bank of America and Citigroup both have similar programs in the works – but it is the first time such an alliance has been made.
This could yield some major opportunities to invest in for the coming years; however, we have yet to see such a system really take off. After all, there are some major security tradeoffs. What would happen if you left your phone unguarded and it was stolen? What if your cell phone battery died? What if you simply misplaced you phone? There are still many factors to consider, but the bottom line is that these advances are going to be reshaping the mobile application industry in a major way!
Maybe our phones will end up becoming too convenient!
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110123/BUSINESS/101230312/1003/Phones-get-smarter
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