Mobile wallet offered to UK shoppers

bbc.co.uk

7 pointsnootopian4 comments

Limited usability I think considering it applies to only Orange customers with Barclays accounts. Typically in the UK, it's virtually impossible to get any banks and/or mobile companies to standardise on technology (think debit cards: VISA/Switch/Solo/PO etc) so I can only see problems and more market fragmentation appear.

I don't believe the standardisation point is true. The banks came together to create the EMV (Eurocard - Mastercard - Visa) standards, which define eg how chip & pin works. The mobile industry is also very big on standards.

The issue is about who owns the customer. There's the one secure element (the SIM/bank card chip) - who should own that? Technically both operator and bank can coexist on the same card, but the commercial position is not so simple.

I was talking about before that with the old Switch/Solo junk that went on. I did a spell working for an e-commerce outfit and integrating with the merchant banks was an absolute nightmare.

Chip 'n' Pin seems to be pretty ubiquitous - I was pretty surprised to see an American colleague having to sign for something the other day.

I only have a couple of cash transactions a month - the barber I go to being the last hold out.

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