No wallet, no problem? | Hacker News Reader

No wallet, no problem?

blog.thomvest.com

19 pointsmobeta13 comments

I was unfamiliar with a number of the products he was planning to use for merchant payment, so I clicked around to find out more. It was quite striking how many of the (very few) options were caffeine, sugar or alcohol delivery venues. If one needed to actually live only on mobile payment goods I think you'd be in a very tight spot - and probably mostly have to rely on google wallet and questionable gas station snack food.

Does this mean these are simply the types of businesses these startups are courting, or does it reflect some kind of honest disinterest in these technologies by volume businesses like groceries and durable goods?

"And the user experience is the key: cash and credit cards are convenient as long as you have them with you..." - I'm yet to get out of my apartment without my wallet that has my money, credit cards and ids, I did get out of apartment without my phone quite a few times. Another problem is: how would I use my phone to pay for goods? Some mobile app? Good luck finding merchants accepting these around. NFC? Hey, I do have a Chase card with NFC feature. Guess how often I can use it? Only in a couple of supermarkets and only if their terminals are not broken, which happen rather often. By all means, keep pushing mobile payments, but don't paint it as a silver bullet, please.

> Another problem is: how would I use my phone to pay for goods? Some mobile app?

I bet people asked the same question about credit cards when they were a brand new thing.

Yes, but now we (almost) all do have credit cards and this makes little incentive for merchants to upgrade to something new, which tries to solve the solved problem by replacing one thing to carry around with another thing to carry around.

But that other thing is almost always present - it's not another thing you have to carry, it's adding capability to something almost everyone carries around.

And again, back in the day, there was no incentive to add new fangled credit card readers, when everyone just carried cash and checks around anyway, etc., etc.

The benefits of going from carrying cash or writing checks to swiping card were clear - the benefits of going from swiping card to swiping phone or poking into some application are not so obvious.

As much as I love the idea of ubiquitous mobile payments, it's not going to let us ditch our wallets any time soon until the government accepts our phones as a valid form of ID to replace driver's licenses, etc. Until then, my credit card is just another piece of plastic in my wallet. If I have to keep carrying my wallet with me regardless, how do mobile payments make my life easier?

I think that's a good point and IDs will definitely be one of the more significant inhibitors of widespread adoption. That said, perhaps if mobile payments networks took off, private side innovation might help push public sector reform (naive, I know..but I can dream..). And if an ID were the only thing you needed, I wouldn't be surprised if smartphone cases with ID sleeves quickly showed up in the market to bring the wallet and phone together

My first thought is of a phone case that has a slot for credit and ID cards. I thought it was a pretty brilliant idea - the only reason I don't use it is because I still have to carry cash and other miscellaneous crap. :(

Mobile payments are no longer interesting or exciting to, but mostly frustrating. Hopefully, Google throwing a couple billion at ubiquitizing NFC terminals will stir things up.

Japan has been doing it for years while US giants hold each other in a stalemate. At least Square is happily trotting forward while Visa and Mastercard miss another Paypal.

If you look at Japan, one of the big reasons they were able to get so far ahead with mobile payments being ubiquitous was NTT docomo's subsidizing of the NFC units for merchants. Whether it will be Google, Verifone, or someone else is yet to be seen, but NFC is coming one way or another.

Agreed. It's smelling like Google: http://phandroid.com/2011/03/15/google-reportedly-buying-up-...

From what I remember, the credit card and merchant acquiring companies were more interested in transactions that were of low value, and in which time was more of an issue. So, they went after quick service restaurants, convenience stores, and movie theaters. I remember specific roll outs from MCDs, JackIntheBox, Regal, 7-11, and as they rolled out, nobody noticed except those of us familiar with the hardware/ logos. I would ask the clerks if people used these payment methods, and half of them didn't realize that it was even there or an option.

Because smaller merchants are more price sensitive, they were simply assumed not to be interested, so they weren't targeted by their merchant acquirers. Instead, the sales folks went to the large national chains that operate or franchise stores across the US.

It's also interesting to note that much of our mass transit trains in larger cities are equipped with compatible terminals (NYC, DC, SanFran, Chicago, Atlanta, Las Vegas). There's only 3 significant systems integrators in the space (e.g. Cubic Systems), so hopefully Google is in talks with them as well.

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