Potential Industry Trend: Mobile Wallets Replace Cards

Trends

• Trends: What do we look for?
• Technology Trend: Cloud Computing
• Industry Trend: Unbundling of banks – Lending Club
• Regulatory Trend: Deregulation – RBI granting banking licenses
• Industry Trend: Immediate everything – Payments
• Market Trend: Branchless Banking
• Market Trend: New Market Entrants
• Market Trend: Banks Extending Their Reach
• Industry Trend: Bank White-Label Services
• Industry Trend: Dual Strategies
• Societal Trend: Exploding Data
• Technology Trend: Banking API’s
• Market Trend: Digital Natives
• Market Trend: Mobile Adoption
• Technology Trend: Digital KYC
• Potential Technology Trend: Internet of Things
• Industry Trend: The Bank Finds You
• Potential Industry Trend: Mobile Wallets Replace Cards
• Industry Trend: Social & Mobile Payments
• Industry Trend: Virtual Currencies
• Industry Trend: Social Finance
• Technology Trend: Big Data
• Potential Industry Trend: Bank as Data Manager
• Technology Trend: WiFi Availability
• Technology Trend: Fast Cycle of Consumer Technology
• Technology Trend: Biometric Authentication
• Industry Trend: Social Servicing
• Industry Trend: Social Reputations
• Market Trend: Increased Substitution with Capital Markets
• Industry Trend: Aggregator / Comparison Sites

First, let me say that I do not consider myself an expert on mobile wallets.  Second, I don’t have a mobile wallet and I am not aware of anyone that I know personally who has one, so I can not say that there is a trend of mobile wallets taking over the industry.  I have never heard anyone lament that they could not get a mobile wallet, so I can not say that demand exists for a potential market-driven change at this time.  However, I hear about mobile wallets so much that I figure I am out-of-touch if I don’t put them on my watch list as a potential trend.

Digital Bank predicts that less than half of payments will be through cards by the end of the decade and that card processing firms will no longer be around.  On the other hand the glass-half-full view is that as many as half of all payments will be through cards so there will be someone processing them.

I have to assume that this will develop into an industry-driven change.  Either payment-processing companies see it as a way to reduce fraud, non-payment-processing companies see it as a way to wedge in on payment-processing companies, both see it as a way to collect and respond to payment data right on the mobile device, or some other similar motivation.  More and more I see statements like “Mobile payments have enabled local businesses to track customer spend and deliver unique offers to individual customers like never before. Now with iBeacon functionality, businesses using LevelUp can also communicate with customers during their crucial decision-making process.“  So I am labeling it a potential industry trend.

See Finextra Leadership: Sberbank’s digital adventurer for an update on work being done by Digital Ventures on mobile wallets in Russia.