Few days ago the giant smart phone manufacturer Apple announced its new payment product ‘Apple pay’ and finally iPhone will come with NFC port in a step that all the world identified as very late step from Apple side!
Apart form the new introduced techniques, the added security value and the new payment experience, the announced product did not add any new value or proposition to the mobile payment industry.
Three years ago Google launched its own Google wallet product with the same concept Apple did, where the mobile is simply replacing the plastic card and providing some extra controls. It was counted as a revolutionary product by this time, but to introduce the same concept again now is not the right thing and not what we were expecting from Apple after this long silence.
During the last two years we have seen a lot of trials and solutions to offer a new parallel payment industry to solve the existing Credit card issues and take part of this unlimited cake! In 2011 Facebook announced the Facebook Credit product which was very early and brave step. And for we can’t bypass the ongoing bitcoin progress.
When roamers were talking about Apple payment product I was expecting to see a new concept and revolutionary product like (Apple Money!) as real step to act against the existing market players and be a real financial processor rather than using its product as a security layer over the credit card numbers!
A real mobile payment product from my side is a product that can act alone in the absence of the credit card to provide the user with a real value to use mobile as wallet, apart from the sexy appeal of the new announced product I can’t see the added value to stop using my credit card as a payment method in one single purchase step and use a different product that will require a special payment POS terminal, mobile, internet connectivity, GSM strong signal and a finger print too! And guess what, I will do this for 0.15 fees extra!
I would understand that I might like to give it a try as a technology geek or to ensure that it works as it should but on the long run I do not guess that I will keep using it on the long run.
To implement a successful mobile money product you have to work in this shadow area where credit cards are not so much familiar or to design your product for those segment that are not illegible to open a bank account. And still you need the courage to introduce your own coins or your own financial processing network, by then I would definitely call it a mobile payment!
Khaled Sayed
Et tu, Brute? Another common translation for the phrase is “You too, Brutus?”. Literally, the Latin phrase translates to “And” (or “Also”) “you, Brutus?”.
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