The development of mobile wallet technology is being held back by a number of ‘hidden controls’ which remain largely unexplored in the public domain, suggests Mobey Forum, the global bank-driven industry association enhancing the evolution of a sustainable and prosperous mobile financial services (MFS) ecosystem.
Mobey Forum’s latest white paper ‘Mobile Wallet: The Hidden Controls’ takes a step into the future and considers the external forces that will dictate how consumers and merchants engage with mobile wallet technology during their day-to-day activities. The paper defines and analyses a series of ‘hidden control points’, which map the commercial battlegrounds where stakeholders will vie to influence both acceptance and adoption of mobile wallet technology.
Amir Tabakovic, Head of Market Development at PostFinance and Chair of the Mobey Forum Mobile Wallet Task Force comments: “As the first wave of mobile wallet solutions start to appear, the market’s attention remains fixed on mobile wallet apps and the devices where they reside. We think this is unbalanced – the mobile wallet ecosystem is highly complex and its component parts are interdependent. The market’s failure to adequately consider the external forces influencing the mobile wallet is preventing the technology from fulfilling its full potential.”
“Mobey Forum has already established that providing an ‘easy way to pay’ will not be enough to guarantee mass market adoption of the mobile wallet,” adds Sirpa Nordlund, Executive Director, Mobey Forum. “Consumers must be lured away from their conventional wallets by the promise of some form of unique, additional value in return for agreeing to change their behaviour. But how will these new value oriented services integrate with the payment systems? What will motivate merchants to accept mobile wallet payments and what form will the acceptance infrastructure take? What are the integration issues? These are the kinds of questions we address in our latest paper.”
This paper is the third in a series of mobile wallet white papers from Mobey Forum. It aims to educate and encourage stakeholders to develop business models that will simultaneously generate revenue and optimise the consumer benefits and experience of mobile wallet technology.
The paper will be of interest to merchants, banks and financial institutions, mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and operating system providers. To download the ‘Mobile Wallet: The Hidden Controls’ white paper without charge, visit www.mobeyforum.org.
