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Will Mobile Wallets Replace Their Traditional Counterparts?
Cara_Latham writes "Mobile wallets are all the rage. But legitimate questions remain as to whether they will ever truly replace their leathery counterparts. Mobile wallets, which use NFC-based technology to allow customers to make contactless payments at the point of sale, already have begun to make their presence felt. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google launched a digital wallet this past fall. The search giant has agreements with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover to make the Google Wallet available to the card companies' account holders, and there even are some NFC-enabled terminals in use across the U.S. that can accept it, including at many mass transit stations. And mobile wallet ventures are cropping up around the globe, as well. Telecom companies including Vodafone and Telefonica announced this year wallet initiatives in Africa and Latin America. But mobile wallets still face many hurdles before they can gain widespread adoption, experts say, including the rather difficult task of getting consumers to change long-held habits."
Google Wallet on the phone is protected with a PIN, and if you guess it wrong 5 times in a wrong, the Google Wallet data is wiped clean.
My wallet is already mobile.
Anonymous Coward
I'm 47 and have never owned a non-mobile wallet. Not sure what the point would be.
28 dollars later
Where can I find these people who are hip to the mobile wallet scene?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
My pessimistic view is 'yes', the 'but' is; but not for me. For the same reason I buy printed books and like to have vinyl LP's and CD's on the shelf. The tactile and visual pleasure of those 'crisp green ones' (in Australia, that $100 bills are green) is something I would not like to give up. Nor would I like to do away with the symbolism of the US$1 bill, or the history of the British pound.
the day I'm forced to. This sounds like a really really bad idea.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Maybe it's just me, but I've been using cash more and more over the last 15 years or so. Just to restore the basic privacy we all had before OnStar, Google Stalking and street cameras. NFC here is just Google doing what's good for Google, and, well, I just finished switching all my clients to duckduckgo.com, take the hint. Ripping out all the Google Maps stuff next.
One thing I learned working with genomes of pathogenic microorganisms is that unless you are virologist studying rabies, you should avoid rage at all cost.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And the Beast causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
What an interesting way to give someone a "mark" in their right hand, though most people don't hold their phone to their foreheads. And what a coincidental bunch of stories about Sweden looking into giving up cash.
[End Of Line]
My wallet has so many cards in it that it's thick. Add 1.5 mm up again and again, and it's not hard to get something with some thickness. Now, place that under only one side of your butt, and sit on it for a while. Also, I would add, be fit and have very little body fat for cushioning. In no time at all, you'll be uncomfortable.
I've cut back as much as I can, but I travel for business (so that's two cards), have a joint account for household expenses (one card) a credit card for personal use (another card) and a debit card which I use the most (another card). Other things, like a driver's license and health insurance cards...those need to stay. But how I have longed for a solution to move some of those cards out and have them in some other format, so that instead of these rectangles of plastic to represent what is essentially a very short piece of data, I could have it piggyback on a device I already own.
And that's an NFC-endabled smartphone. I get it. I want one.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
in Australia, that $100 bills are green
... and plastic, like the alternatives :)
But I thought a similarly named country gave up plastic money over two centuries ago. "It was around 1780, and it was in Vienna, no plastic money anymore ... something something monkey c*nt" -- Falco, "Rock Me Amadeus"
Instead of a cool "wallet" thing, how about a credit card that I can pre-load with cash so I don't have to carry my other credit cards / debit card in case my physical wallet is stolen?
And so I can feel safer making on-line purchases with non-major sites.
Just so that the most that can ever be stolen is whatever I have pre-loaded.
You know, like Europe has had for years?
I have only one word to respond to that ---
Human Engineering
(It's two words actually, but it sounds much more dramatic to say one word...)
How easy would it be to watch Barbie or Kelly type in their PIN number at the gas station, a shoe store or the Clinique counter. Phones are popular theft items to begin with.
Given that EFTPOS and debit cards have, for all their convenience, not yet completely displaced cash, I'd say it'll be a long time off, if it ever happens, and will have to have additional features than what it does now (like be able to store a driver's licence accepted as valid by your government, for instance).
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
As soon as they make it easy to use them for totally anonymous purchases - Which includes the funding side of the wallet as well as the use.
Right now, however, we already have something almost as good - The Visa Gift card. You can buy them with cash, you can use them almost anywhere, you can't ever go over your "limit", and since they have no name associated with them, it makes no sense to ask for ID at the point of sale (though make no mistake, I've had salesdrones ask for it - Who then completely failed to explain what, exactly, they planned to compare my ID against, in the absence of a signature, name, picture, address, or anything else meaningful).
They have only one major flaw, entirely artificially imposed by the US's bizarre hatred of gambling - You can't easily recharge them. You have to pay the "convenience" fee to pick up a new one, with a fixed predetermined limit. Instead of, for example, "buying" your groceries plus a $1000 recharge for $1000 plus the cost of your groceries (paid in cash from my monthly visit to the ATM, of course).
Fix that, and I'd basically give up cash altogether. Make these some sort of "help Uncle Sam track even your cash purchases" deal, and thankyouverymuchbutno.
Sharing my shopping habits with the bank is bad enough.
Letting a merchant track my name and CC number from transaction to transaction is worse.
Allowing Google or a phone company full access to my purchase history, and sharing my mobile number and email address with a merchant is just too much.
Folks, this new technology is not for your benefit. They're developing it to keep tabs on you and flood you with more advertising. They're counting on you to comply out of the "cool" factor.
Mobile payments offer something never before seen in retail commerce: a shopper-specific, cross-store primary key. Slashdot nerds should appreciate what a primary key is and what it enables.
I've gone back to all cash. I respect the power of technology too much to let it have any leverage over my shopping.
If I was a credit card company, the last thing I would do is cooperate with NFC. It holds the promise of money moving from bank accounts to retailers smoothly without the banks having to mess with a CC affiliation. Banks could even let you buy things on credit if they wanted.
This has tremendous potential to diversify the electronic purchasing world. Any small bank that can get certified can offer service worldwide. The achilles heel is the NFC protocol that brokers the transaction between the retailer and the bank. Is it too much to ask to have an open standard, instead of a mandatory Google/Verizon/Apple account? The last thing I want is to trade one unnecessary middleman for another.
The only benefit to using a phone is that you have to enter a pin to enable the NFC chip so someone can't steal your phone and then start charging to it like they could a credit card.
I'm still not sure about using a phone though, I'd want some type of backup that doesn't rely on a battery. And it more resistant to drop damage.
Have gnu, will travel.
I always dreamed of paying expensive fees on every cash transfer I do. Giving a big company the freedom to stop me from using my wallet whenever it's convenient to them and with great benefit of making recording my purchase history easier than ever before makes this truly perfect. Consumers everywhere rejoice for this opportunity to show our devotion to corporate control!
No F*cking Clue?
Have gnu, will travel.
I get strange looks at the checkout these days when the staff see my credit card with a hole Drilled right through the RFID chip.
When I got my new card it came with this "Pay Wave" feature which they claim is more secure and also convenient (wireless).
EXCEPT that for any EFTPos purchase less than $100 you dont need to enter a PIN.
Basic Security is that you should have a Physical Thing and a secret.
This removes the secret! Hence anyone in possesion of my card can repeatedly buy $100 worth of stuff with my money, and most likely before I have a chance to report it stolen. whereas they are extremely unlikely to guess my pin in 3 attempts before its gets locked out or I report it stolen.
Now I know that the bank has insurance etc and will pay it back. but why need to go through all that hassle when its so easily prevented by existing means.
Legitimate questions would be much less like "Is water wet?" or "Does the Mayan calendar not actually predict the obliteration of the Earth in 2012?" or "Will Apple and Google and a few million /.ers running Kubuntu drive Microsoft into irrelevance and bankruptcy by 2015?"
The physical wallet is not going away. As long as there are legal purchases for which many people would prefer to have plausible deniability, there will be cash. Until the final merger that yields AppFedGoocrosoft, L. L. C., Our Beloved Planetary Government, (with 51% of voting shares held by Goldman-CitiSachs of America, and the financial equity held mostly by the Bain/Koch Group and the LDS Church Inc.) those of us not standing in line to be rendered into spare parts and raw biodiesel input will need some way to hold a half-dozen competing trackable-money tokens, a dozen merchant "savings club" cards, blank bits of thermal paper that used to be receipts we thought we should keep, and enough paper money for a Big Mac, a USA Today, a pack of smokes, and an hour of high-res porn on the medium du jour.
There's the benefit of making your phone the target of hackers everywhere. The reason mobile malware hasn't been nearly as successful as PC malware is there hasn't been enough profit motive. Just wait until mobile phones all have wallets that could give thieves access to billions of dollars of credit. You want incentive to create malware? You'll get scads of professionally written free malware.
There's also the convenience benefit of using a cell phone to pay. Instead of all that hard work of getting your card out of your wallet and swiping it, you simply get out your phone, unlock the keypad with your simple code, find the simple wallet app and tap on it, simply wait for it to load and to prompt you for your PIN, then you simply tap your phone on the NFC reader! Simple, no?
Finally, there's the privacy benefit. If you use Google Wallet, now Google can complete their trifecta of intelligence gathering. They'll know what you search for, they'll know where you surfed to research the thing, and now they'll know when you walked into a brick and mortar store and bought it at retail even after all that on-line research. Google will know everything about commerce everywhere. And if you tell them you're opting out, they won't maintain that association with you, just your habits. How much more privacy could you want?
Was that enough benefit for you?
John
I've seen the Green Dot ones and their fee structure is fucking ridiculous if you want to use it as just a re-loadable card instead of having your pay check deposited to it. Which kind of defeats the idea of "re-loadable".
The best I've found is Western Union's. And even that has a few hoops I have to go through to put cash on it.
Again, Europe has had this tech for years. If I want to lend someone 50 Euro I can do that electronically.
What if your wallet is stolen? Same thing. Call your credit card companies and cancel the numbers.
welcomes you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card
http://www.octopus.com.hk/home/en/index.html
mod that up - at least I didn't just copy it verbatim.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Kinda the point of a wallet. It has several virtues that these new "mobile" wallets don't.
1. The things I have in the wallet are separable.
2. I can put non-digital information in it.
3. I can store untraceable currency in it.
4. It doesn't use batteries.
5. It is completely non-volatile.
6. It is completely secured from hacking.
7. I don't have to trust any third party with the contents of my wallet, ever.
8. The importance of 6 and 7 cannot be overstated.
Tybejee suggests several ways to entice consumers to embrace m-wallets, including making targeted offers as part of the mobile wallet experience based on a consumer's prior purchasing history; tying in mobile wallets with loyalty cards and programs...
Right. The Google Wallet is an end run around banking privacy and security laws.
If the mobile wallet systems were coming from real banks, they might be trusted more. Not from "indemnify us against our mistakes and don't sue us" Google. "You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless GPC, Google, and their subsidiaries and other affiliates, and its and their directors, officers, owners, agents, co-branders or other partners, employees, information providers, licensors, licensees, consultants, contractors and other applicable third parties (including without limitation Paymentech, L.P. and relevant Customers) (collectively "Indemnified Parties") from and against any and all claims, demands, causes of action, debt or liability, including reasonable attorneys fees, including without limitation attorneys fees and costs incurred by the Indemnified Parties arising out of, related to, or which may arise from: (i) your use of the Services; (ii) any breach or non-compliance by you of any term of these Terms of Service or any GPC Party policies; (iii) any dispute or litigation caused by your actions or omissions; or (iv) your negligence or violation or alleged violation of any law or rights of a third party." ... "GPC may delay payment processing of suspicious transactions or transactions which may involve fraud, misconduct, or violate applicable law, these Terms of Service, or other applicable GPC policies, as determined in GPC's > sole and absolute discretion."
Those are much worse terms than banks are allowed to offer. They're more at the level of PayPal, which is notorious for delaying the release of customer funds. No contract with a financial institution should have a "sole discretion" clause like that.
Google insists that if you lose a phone with Google Wallet installed, you have to contact every credit and value card vendor with data in the wallet.
Cash is king. To the point where many vending machines will take 10000yen (~$100) bills and return a stack of 1000yen (~$10) bills plus some coins when you buy a drink (however, most drink machines won't take anything bigger than 1000yen).
RFID cash replacement cards exist (as do ways of using your mobile phone as one), but places that accept them are rare outside the vicinity of train stations (or even in, in western Japan).
EFTPOS seems to be rarer that the RFID readers.
You can make online puchases with some places (eg, Amazon), and pay in cash at the local Lawson convenience store. COD is very common. Lawson even has a system where you can book for certain popular places (tokyo dysney, ghibli museum, etc) and pay in-store. Paying for your mobile phone is the same: many convenience stores will do the processing for you. Seems to be free, too (probably built into the mobile billing system).
The most technologically advanced country on the planet still likes to rub two coins together.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
My mobile phone can't replace my wallet because then where would I carry this Trojan I've had since I was a sophomore in 1976?
It's been with me since the bi-centennial, handed down to me by my cousin Frank who got it from his dad's drawer. And if I should ever get lucky, I want to be prepared.
Hey, it could happen...
You are welcome on my lawn.
until someone chops your thumb off to rob you..
1. It is a physical relative to steganography, which is itself a form of security through obscurity. It isn't gold bars hidden under the couch. I promise. Many of the things in my home that I might consider putting in a safe if I had one are in the class of things one would need to know about a priori to make any real start at finding them. Others are such that most people could stare right at them and not understand them to be worth stealing.
2. Most forms of security that do not involve credible threats of violence are ultimately "security through obscurity."
Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions.
http://www.klfy.com/story/15717759/second-hand-dealer-law
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Law Bans Cash for Second Hand Transactions
Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions.
http://www.klfy.com/story/15717759/second-hand-dealer-law
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Randomize the keypad layout, that would solve the finger smudge pattern issue.
Call them on what, my leather wallet?
The current technology is more than enough to create a market without paper and coin money. Replacing cash with an electronic card would benefit to the environment and, above all, eliminate tax evasion.
As for the privacy concerns, an electronic payment system should only track the amount of money being transfered, not any details on the goods purchased. But I seriously doubt companies will bypass this huge chance for realtime surveying of customers' habits.
We should ask the people in Japan and South Korea the experience of using such systems, where NFC mobile payment systems are very widely used. Especially in Japan, where the mobile version "FeliCa" system (jointly developed by NTT DoCoMo and Sony) is universally used for such payments.
I believe that the US-based ISIS system is based a lot on what was learned from Mobile FeliCa.
To further remove you from actual control over your finances. Akin to electronic voting removing you from your actual choice.
Even in the digital world, I'm sure I'll still manage to have one...
Yep, so all you need to do is check their Facebook profile, and find their DOB.
But, that would confuse Barbie too much....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So to have my daughter pay $.60 for a carton of milk, I can either send her with three coins or a $XXX cell phone. When she loses $.60 somewhere along the way, the lunch lady just writes down her name and we send it the next day. When she breaks that $XXX cell phone, I don't think the same thing is going to happen.
Cash will always have a place. Credit cards haven't been able to displace it and there are a few merchants I deal with who don't want to pay the fees to accept credit cards and run cash-only businesses.
It won't replace cash, credit, or ID anytime soon, but it's definitely replaced the old accordion fold out of a zillion photos of the kids.
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
Half the time someone else has compromised the number. Half the time I've lost it or was physically stolen.
Replaced cards show up as "new credit" on a report, with a possible slight degradation of credit score.
I dont expect this free benefit to last forever.
The most delicious reasons for carrying cash: http://www.urbanspoon.com/t/3/18/New-York/Cash-Only-restaurants Additionally, how would paying a restaurant bill split between several folks work with this system? Hand the waitress a stack of mobile phones? Sounds awkward. This NFC thing does not sound suited for dining out yet, which is arguably my favorite way to spend money.
I have no use for this technology, which will only serve to make it even easier for the government and corporate America to track my movement and habits. Just yesterday I read a news story about how Sweden is considering going cashless. This isn't much better. I want to preserve my right to pay for everything with cash and NOT have all my spending habits and movements tracked through financial transactions.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This makes me think of a Kickstarter project I saw the other week to consolidate credit and other cards so I don't have to carry so many in my wallet. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1404403369/geode-from-icache
I remember rejecting the idea a decade and a half ago ... have I been convinced to start?
No, I think not.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"