Is There Other Money to Be Had? At What Cost?

So in the past couple of weeks, I've been slacking on keeping tabs on all that's going on in the mobile space, mostly because there's just so much to funnel down, but let's give it a go. I thought that the above video was very fun, so I just dropped that one in here for a bit of a giggle.

From the leaders of the pack:

• Google is said to be well on their way toward their summer pilot (happening in New York and San Francisco) and has been partnering with MasterCard and Citigroup to deliver mpayment services to Android smartphones
• Facebook, in a play to get more toward the value added services aspect of it, has made a deal with Warner Brothers to allow for streaming movies- their first upload was The Dark Knight
• • The article that I linked to, from the New York Times, brings up another good point in that the NYTimes is also beginning to charge for their services this week by instituting the paywall that they've been warning of for so long. This basically means online news is no longer free :(
  • However, there have already been multiple attempts to see how the paywall can be circumvented- no one comes between techies and their news!
• The Fed published a new paper entitled, "Mobile Payments in the United States: Mapping Out the Road Ahead" (download here) which is interesting because it definitely validates some key points that I've been working on with my team, namely that security will be a big concern, regulatory practices will need to catch up to mpayments in order to keep us from chaos and that the open platform model (developing an open platform that multiple players can use) will be the  best platform for the industry to build on in that allows multiple players to build upon one another's work
• Amex is pushing ahead with a version of a mwallet, with it's "Serve" product offering- an ewallet that requires users to set up different funding sources online that can be accessed from a single piece of plastic. This is not new, it's basically the PayPal card, but Capital One and other players also have similar product offerings with their decoupled debit card
• We also have a new player in the race to get to POS systems with CHARGE Anywhere which is entering a very dangerous realm considering the feud that just completed between Verifone and Square (but which was addressed today in an open letter to the payments industry  from Annmarie Hart, the CEO and president of MagTek
• RIM is trying to get back in the game by possibly embedding NFC chips in their phones as well (like Apple and Google), acquiring mobile app testing platform tinyHippos and acquiring social media developer Gist last month (specializing in enterprise social media tools) and The Astonishing Tribe late last year (mobile user interface design firm)
• Moreover, RIM is also planning on having its BlackBerry PlayBook enabled to run Android apps, which would allow it to capitalize on all the hard work that Android has already put into its system by allowing open source development on its platform
  

In a recent article on CIO.com, the discussion turned philosophical, asking, "Mobile Payments in U.S.: Creative Chaos or Just Chaos?". In this article, they briefly discuss the antagonistic relationship between the telcos and the banks determining who "owns" the customer and who should get the "proper" share of revenue (whatever that means). Bottom line is there is a lot of change going on right now, and a lot of money to be had. Based on what we know so far, what are the predictions?

1. Banks are not hardware developers. And they probably never plan to become one, so in order for them to get a jump on the game, expect a lot more partnerships (Visa, Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo on the In2Pay microSD pilot) and a more acquisitions as they scramble to fill the banks (Visa acquires Cybersource, American Express utilizing its acquisition of RevolutionMoney, etc.)
2. These partnerships could yield new companies- Rabobank for example, is both a bank and owns a telecom arm called RaboMobiel (how convenient!)- ISIS has been announced in the U.S., but what other "new alternative players" will crop up?
3. Chicken or Egg, both merchants AND consumers need to sign onto the mobile process for it to be successful, right now, the "cool factor" is there, but the tangible value proposition isn't really. HOWEVER, we do see the beginnings of this (the promotion from Starbucks/Visa partnership for example) but customers and merchants will ultimately drive the success
4. Lots of existing players will begin investing in new ways- TurboTax for example, is now using image capture to utilize the camera function on mobile phones
5. There will be many intermediary steps to move consumers from physical channels (cash for NFC, apps for bank branches) and this should be expected- the In2Pay microSD cards are just the beginning
6. Mobile functions are mostly focused on NFC right now, but I expect that barcodes and bluetooth will also make an appearance as we try to bridge the gap between what we can do (with a normal BlackBerry) and what I want to do (BlackBerry with NFC-enabled SIM card?)
7. More alternative players jumping in- players like Boku, Zong and PayPal have been in this game for awhile and they're primed to continue their supremacy, and have been strangely quiet for a long time. I'm sure they're cooking up good things