Next year, we expect after the New Payments Platform is ratified by the Reserve Bank, many new services that will link mobile phones to payments. What is holding it back mobile payments is that they are not that easy to use, you need to take your phone out of your pocket and going into the correct app, entering your code and hit pay. It is a lot slower than taking your card out and waving it across a terminal. This will change as what industry wants is for the mobile to replace the credit card, so they are now working on a way to make a mobile act as a card. In time, I expect that the mobile phone will replace the credit card.
I see positives and negatives with this.
On the positives, with so many new players, eg paypal, Amazon, WeChat, google, apple, etc., the retailer might be able to negotiate better deals. The negative is with so many players, most who will make a very tiny amount of the turnover of a store the retailer is going to have a juggling act on how to handle it. Supposing I decide to accept Apple payments, do I have to go though the bother that our clients with paypal have in setting up an account? Does the money go into an iTunes account and then into my bank account? Then do I have the same bother with google wallet, Amazon, WeChat etc. Of course if it gets into Bitcoin will I even need a bank?
This one thing is for sure; we are seeing it now and its growing.
