A view on the trigger behaviour for mobile payments

It is my believe that many experts just re-package what they heard other people say. The saying: "Originality is the art of concealing your source", is true for most people. However, some individuals do exist that are capable of new, original thought. It is these people that build new offerings and ultimately change the world. I am privileged to know quite a few such people. One of them is my good friend Dave Parratt.

We have shared thoughts on this industry through many hours of discussion and always found his thoughts interesting and stimulating. Unfortunately I cannot share all of them because they were shared in confidentiality. However, he recently spoke about one such theory in a podcast published on the web (Read here). I suppose this means that it is now general knowledge and I can also publish it.

Dave postulate that widespread adoption of payment systems are triggered by change in behaviour of the population. He says (for instance) that the big move to card-based payments from check-payments was triggered by people that started travelling more frequently. Check-payments from foreigners were frowned on, but quickly got replaced by a plastic card.

He then describe (in much more detail than is possible on this blog), how the need for "card-not-present" transactions will drive the adoption of mobile payments. He does not believe that mobile payments (ala NFC) will replace card payments in retail environments, but will definitely become the preferred mechanism to pay in situations where cards cannot be used. (On the web, call centers, and of course on your phone). Transactions where you wanted to use your card, but cannot because you could not swipe the plastic, it is those type of transactions that are the low hanging fruit for mobile payments.