If Nav has been the killer phone feature of late, M Payments seem set to dominate the conversation next year. Protagonists like Visa and Amex are finally getting their acts together; Paypal is integrated with Blackberry; even Bank of America has a handy personal banking app that may foreseeably allow direct debit; iPhone apps like Zenius enable merchants to process credit card transactions; and today saw Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey showing off “Square”, a card-swipe gizmo that plugs into the headphone jack (sweeeeet!) and syncs with a register on the screen.
There are at least two troublesome issues with most of these innovations. Firstly, why the hell has it taken them so long, given the enormous value to customers and profit to providers that the mobile wallet promises to deliver? (It’s no use blaming the carriers as usual). And secondly, driven by said profit motive, the sheer numbers of them, ...