A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about O2 launching "mobile payments" by simply sticking their brand on a plastic card, with the focus on pre-paid credit cards, often used by teenagers or those without bank accounts in a given country.
It's a lot easier than messing about with NFC or various other clunky handset-based payment mechanisms, with convoluted value chains and numerous practical difficulties. Done well, it can probably share back-end software components and may over time evolve to something mre sophisticated.
But for now, convergence at a brand level in payment services is much easier than at a technical level.
Evidence of this is provided by UK mobile retailer Phones4U now doing much the same thing.
I'm sure others will follow suit (and perhaps have done already - these two are just prominent UK examples).
Comments from Zantrio Members
credit card payments by phone?
what next... my phone will brush my teeth for me?
Just check out an iphone. You can do anything on that thing. From accepting credit card payments to printing shipping labels.
haha good point Hapday.
I don;t know much about the blackberry apps but I have to wonder if it will honestly compete with the iphones apps.
What about an iphone 2.0? What could they possibly do to make it better.