VeriSign & Visa offer mobile payments
Remember, oh, a few hours ago when we told you about at&t/Cingular signing deals to enable mobile banking, and how it was a gateway towards mobile payments? Well it looks like mobile payments are already upon us. VeriSign and Visa have just signed a deal to partner together with merchants to not only allow payments to be be made via cell phones, but special offers given to mobile payment customers.
Imagine walking up to a soda machine and sending a text message that you want a Coke, or buying your new big screen TV by simply sending a text to Best Buy. That future is upon us. The world is moving away from cash payments, and utilizing the mobile phone is the next logical step.
Thanks, Brian
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Interesting that the US is continuing to be about two years behind the rest of the world in terms of mobile technology. Austria has the soda machines shown above. You can pay for parking meters with a text message in New Zealand. You can buy train tickets and 7-11 products with your phone in Japan. You can unlock your door with your phone in Japan. But the duopoly of Verizon and Cingular (the old ATT!) are still fixated with the idea that a mobile phone is for entertainment (V-Cast, American Idol ringtones) when the rest of the world sees it as a tool, a wallet, a communication device, and a gateway to the Internet.
I seriously, seriously can’t wait for the US to catch up to the fact that we can use our phones for a hell of a lot more than just making calls.
On the other hand, it does seem that Americans (generally speaking) are a bunch of Luddites, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it took another 5 years for awesome stuff like good cell phones, mobile payments, etc.
What will be nice is when cellphones start to get NFP to do the transactions:
http://www.nokia.com/nfc
Cool!
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Nice!
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Interesting…