The Pocket Merger: Your Phone is Becoming Your Wallet. Will Your CU Be Prepared?
By Ron Daly
‘m an iPhone guy. When most of my peers were pecking away at a Blackberry hard-key, I was tapping and swiping my touchscreen wonder-phone. I’m currently working with an iPhone 4s, having bequeathed my old phone to one of my kids (who dropped her iPhone and shattered the screen).
As someone who sits watching at the cross section of technology and finance, I’m fascinated by the idea of the “mobile wallet”. I read a little more about it every day and, despite all my reading, I’m not quite sure what to think. Yes, interest is growing, but it’s still small. Yes, the tech advancements are impressive, but also scattered between the people who were already handling payments (Visa, Mastercard and the like) and the start-ups (or is it “upstarts”?) out to stake their claim (Paypal,Square, Isis). Cheap, plastic doodads jut out of your phone that let you physically swipe a credit card with your smart phone. Suddenly, your smart phone’s a wallet AND a cash register.
And a bank account? Time will tell, I suppose, if the merger between your phone and your wallet puts CUs at risk.
I pulled a few recent articles about the topic that I think are worth reading:
Mobile Monday: Square Wallet Provides a Sneak Peek at the Future of Proximity Payment (Jim Bruene, NetBanker, full story here)
continue reading »“And all your previous transactions, with full itemized receipts, are available within the Square app… It’s truly the future of payments available for a sneak peek today. I highly recommend giving the Square Wallet a try.”
