

No wallet, no problem? - mobeta
http://blog.thomvest.com/nowalletnoproblem/

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trotsky
I was unfamiliar with a number of the products he was planning to use for
merchant payment, so I clicked around to find out more. It was quite striking
how many of the (very few) options were caffeine, sugar or alcohol delivery
venues. If one needed to actually live only on mobile payment goods I think
you'd be in a very tight spot - and probably mostly have to rely on google
wallet and questionable gas station snack food.

Does this mean these are simply the types of businesses these startups are
courting, or does it reflect some kind of honest disinterest in these
technologies by volume businesses like groceries and durable goods?

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jimbobimbo
"And the user experience is the key: cash and credit cards are convenient as
long as you have them with you..." - I'm yet to get out of my apartment
without my wallet that has my money, credit cards and ids, I did get out of
apartment without my phone quite a few times. Another problem is: how would I
use my phone to pay for goods? Some mobile app? Good luck finding merchants
accepting these around. NFC? Hey, I do have a Chase card with NFC feature.
Guess how often I can use it? Only in a couple of supermarkets and only if
their terminals are not broken, which happen rather often. By all means, keep
pushing mobile payments, but don't paint it as a silver bullet, please.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> Another problem is: how would I use my phone to pay for goods? Some mobile
> app?

I bet people asked the same question about credit cards when they were a brand
new thing.

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jimbobimbo
Yes, but now we (almost) all do have credit cards and this makes little
incentive for merchants to upgrade to something new, which tries to solve the
solved problem by replacing one thing to carry around with another thing to
carry around.

~~~
pavel_lishin
But that other thing is almost always present - it's not another thing you
have to carry, it's adding capability to something almost everyone carries
around.

And again, back in the day, there was no incentive to add new fangled credit
card readers, when everyone just carried cash and checks around anyway, etc.,
etc.

~~~
jimbobimbo
The benefits of going from carrying cash or writing checks to swiping card
were clear - the benefits of going from swiping card to swiping phone or
poking into some application are not so obvious.

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guptaneil
As much as I love the idea of ubiquitous mobile payments, it's not going to
let us ditch our wallets any time soon until the government accepts our phones
as a valid form of ID to replace driver's licenses, etc. Until then, my credit
card is just another piece of plastic in my wallet. If I have to keep carrying
my wallet with me regardless, how do mobile payments make my life easier?

~~~
mobeta
I think that's a good point and IDs will definitely be one of the more
significant inhibitors of widespread adoption. That said, perhaps if mobile
payments networks took off, private side innovation might help push public
sector reform (naive, I know..but I can dream..). And if an ID were the only
thing you needed, I wouldn't be surprised if smartphone cases with ID sleeves
quickly showed up in the market to bring the wallet and phone together

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baconface
Mobile payments are no longer interesting or exciting to, but mostly
frustrating. Hopefully, Google throwing a couple billion at ubiquitizing NFC
terminals will stir things up.

Japan has been doing it for years while US giants hold each other in a
stalemate. At least Square is happily trotting forward while Visa and
Mastercard miss another Paypal.

~~~
hurricane
If you look at Japan, one of the big reasons they were able to get so far
ahead with mobile payments being ubiquitous was NTT docomo's subsidizing of
the NFC units for merchants. Whether it will be Google, Verifone, or someone
else is yet to be seen, but NFC is coming one way or another.

~~~
baconface
Agreed. It's smelling like Google: [http://phandroid.com/2011/03/15/google-
reportedly-buying-up-...](http://phandroid.com/2011/03/15/google-reportedly-
buying-up-nfc-payment-terminals-for-deployment-around-san-francisco-and-nyc/)

