Thursday, August 25, 2011

U.S., Global Executives Disagree About Leadership in Mobile Payments


U.S executives and other global executives seem to disagree in some significant ways about the likely early winners in mobile payments.

Two groups of financial institutions are the current front-runners, say respondents surveyed as part of the 2011 KPMG Mobile Payments Outlook. That survey of nearly 1,000 executives primarily in the financial services, technology, telecommunications, and retail industries globally found that 83 percent of the respondents believe that mobile payments will be mainstream within four years (by 2015). In fact, 46 percent believe mobile payments will be mainstream within two years.

That is true both for U.S. and global executives. Banks, which scored the highest in level of importance in the value chain, and credit card companies (processing networks) will have the most important roles, according to business leaders globally.

But there the views diverge. Global executives placed telecommunications companies third, ahead of online payment leaders such as PayPal, Boku and Obopay, major application providers(Google, Facebook, Amazon), retailers and technology companies.

Among U.S. respondents, the application giants (such as Google, Facebook, Amazon), placed third, followed by specialist online payment players (PayPal, Boku and Obopay) and only then telecommunications companies, which were rated of equal importance, retailers and technology companies.

In other words, after Visa and MasterCard, and card-issuing banks, U.S. executives believe application providers such as Google will lead. Firms such as PayPal are seen as on a par with mobile service providers in likelihood to lead the market.

One can speculate about that difference of perspective, but it might be that U.S. contestants have a keener appreciation of the strengths the application giants and online payment players can bring to bear in the U.S. market, compared to most markets internationally, including developing nations and regions, where mobile service providers already have emerged as key players, working with the banks.

To reiterate, globally, executives tend to believe the banks and mobile service providers are most important. In the United States, respondents believe it is the banks and applications providers who are most important. That’s a significant difference in perspective.

But there also are several distinct market segments, and leadership in each segment is viewed differently. The KPMG survey respondents, globally, see online payment systems emerging early, as a mass market segment, in part because they already has done so.

Likewise, mobile banking as an early segment to emerge, again because there already has been substantial progress on this front. NFC-based payments are seen as taking longer to develop, as well as widespread carrier billing and the “mobile wallet.”

In regard to carrier billing, respondents probably are referring to widespread use of mobile phone bills as a payment mechanism, not the capability, which has been in place for quite some time.

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