Paying with Your Cellphone in the US - Please Stand-By!
In an article titled "Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait", Leslie Berlin writes for the New York Times about why America is not on the verge of mobile payments at POS.
Unfortunately, it's not a pretty picture.For that to happen, all the players will have to work together to define standards, determine revenue-sharing, expand the network of electronic readers and think through the other parts of what he calls “this 2,000-piece puzzle.”
While this may be a great system, it still is vulnerable to identity theft. If the phone is lost or stolen the owner has to go through the same tedious process of canceling all the credit cards placed on the phone that they do if a real credit was or stolen. In addition its possible to get personal information, like a person’s name, from the credit-card account data stored on the mobile phone. There is a better and safer way to purchase items, especially items on the internet, with a cellphone. OneTouch Online Purchasing™ enables consumers who do not have a credit card, to finally purchase everything they've ever wanted. If you log on to http://freeonetouchdownloads.com/ for your free promo account. You can then use the promotional cash to buy things like themes, ringtones, and games for your mobile phone at sites like www.gsmarena.com for residents of the UK and Spain and www.gamemobile.com for anyone with a phone worldwide
Posted by: Alex | January 25, 2009 at 02:20 AM
In fact, I've just discussed this question in one of my latest posts - http://fbaud.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/why-do-i-need-to-know-what-payment-systems-my-vendor-accepts/ - and I think that if we had an open and real-time settlement system, we would not need to have each part of the puzzle drafting an agreement with every other parts. We could have payment sending systems with their own revenue model satisfactory to the buyer inter-operating in real-time through an open standard to a payment receiving system with a revenue model satisfactory to the vendor.
Posted by: FredericBaud | January 25, 2009 at 07:26 AM
The EFF has a current initiative called "Free Your Phone" designed to open up access to mobile phone handsets and their software. See: http://www.freeyourphone.org/
Posted by: Scott Loftesness | January 25, 2009 at 07:32 AM