Are Mobile Payments the Next Big Thing? | Hacker News Reader

Are Mobile Payments the Next Big Thing?

calebelston.com

15 pointsdkasper13 comments

My main issue with buying online is shipping time.

However, excluding that - looking back over two years of my buying history shows that the vast, vast, vast majority of everything I've bought online has been on Amazon.

That being said, I do like his mobile flow. I also completely agree with his assessment of the carriers as the primary issue in all of this. They're habitually greedy. Given that, for the next while at least, I'm more than happy just using Amazon.

The carriers do slow down innovation. It's almost funny that they think of themselves as high-tech companies. And because the radio waves are heavily regulated everywhere in the world, there can be no competition until someone comes up with a technology that obsoletes current mobile phones.

So I'm shopping on Amazon on my laptop, and I want to check out. So I go to a different device, and wait for a message over a different communications medium, type in a response, send it back, and wait for the web app to refresh?

I guess mobile phones are becoming the only easy and reliable means of identity verification.

The ease would be in not having to sign up in the first place. Place your order, put in your phone number, answer yes and you're done. Smaller sites would be the winners.

You could also more easily implement time-delayed transactions. Make to order-deliveries sometimes don't charge up front, but instead opt to charge when they're about to deliver. If you (the seller) could send a simple SMS asking for payment, or phone a number when you (the buyer) got the invoice instead of having to sign in with your bank on your computer it'd make life easier for at least some people.

yes, I think Mobile payments will be huge in the US, if carriers can come to their senses and allow it to happen.

I wonder if RFID integration with mobile phones will also gain traction at all, like Mobile FeliCa in Japan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa

I say yes for the simple reason that Pizza Hut has done $1m in sales from their iPhone app.

That's not a nod to mobile payments - but because Pizza Hut offers a 20% discount for using your iPhone to order a pizza.

We're hoping they are... If anyone in or around Palo Alto wants to help us build a really cool product related to them, let me know!

What you think of Venmo?

It'a already here. At least in India. Mobile payments could be involved when you are recharging your Airtel phone. There is also an mobile banking (payment) app that comes with Airtel's new SIM.

And of course, South Korea is a global leader in mobile payment technology, but in this case I cannot provide my own actual experience. =)

In Japan as well. I could use my cellphone to take the train at any station in Tokyo and probably elsewhere, buy stuff at the convenience store, etc. You can even link a credit card to your phone so you don't have to charge it with actual money.

I don't think you can checkout stuff on the internet though.

Yes, mobile payments are certainly not new to the world, but have not yet taken off in the U.S. I really want them in the U.S. too and for online commerce.

-Caleb Elston

Adding minutes to your prepaid cellphone via SMS can hardly qualify as "mobile payments". You basically buy a calling card, scratch the number, and SMS it to the provider. To say that "mobile payments are already here in India" based on that is inaccurate in my view.

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