Soon the people will start leaving their wallets in their homes, since the cell phones will become the wallets, according to CNNMoney.com. Credit cards will become obsolete, due to the ease of payment using the contactless(wireless) transactions. The curves for expected mobile payments in the upcomming years, are quite encouraging. However it seems, that the change in trend (from credit card to cell phone) would not be as fast as expected, because it may be difficult for the people to change their habits quickly.
Although the trend is beneficial for the cellular industry, there are certain security related concerns as well, raised due these mobile payments. Perhaps the most effective remedy for these issues could be to raise the awareness level of the people, about the possible ways of fraud, thus making the payments more secure. May be its more easy to secure a wallet than to secure a cell phone doing payments.
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If this is annual payments, the figures look somewhat low to me. Do we know what is the total turnover ? Is this a significant part of the worlds spending ?
Agreed, it seems to be not significant in relative terms. In addition, it seems to be quite easy to do electronic pick pocketing as shown in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyeWSivAfEA