The Mobile Wallet
Checking out of the grocery store with the touch of your phone, sure why not. Our cell phones have basically become another appendage attached to our bodies, why not make it do one more thing?
With the virtual wallet, you can store your credit cards on your phone and pay by putting your phone up to a sales terminal.
There are four major players in this new form of payment: Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Wallet and CurrentC. Each service stores your credit cards in the designated app on your device. Apple, Samsung and Google all use the tap to pay method, in which users need only hold their NFC (Near Field Communication) enabled phone to near a NFC terminal and tap a finger to ensure security. CurrentC uses a QR code that is scanned at check out.
But why care about mobile payments? Your credit cards fit very comfortably in your wallet, you wallet is kept in your pocket or in your bag. However adults between the ages of 18-34 are more likely to carry a mobile phone than to carry cash, says a recent study conducted by Visa. Seems like the next sensible move would be to keep your credit/debit cards on your phone. If you have less to carry, you have less to forget (now where are my keys?). The mobile payment market is growing, slowly but growing. According to Forrester Research, by 2018 15-20% of people will be using mobile wallets on their smartphones. In 2014 about $235 billion in mobile payments were made, Gartner Inc. reports that mobile payments will be use by 450 million users by 2017, $721 billion being spent.
Currently mobile wallet payments are being accepted at over 30 million locations and are predicted to increase.
We’ve reached a point where all you need when walking out of your house is a cellphone. Forget the hassle of taking a bag anywhere, just grab your phone and a set a keys. So when do we start storing our driver license information on our phones? Are our phones going to become our personal information hub, eliminating the need for anything else? Next we’ll be able to start our cars from our phones and eliminate the existence of a key.
