Smartphone payments – are we ready, or still scared?

Wave your phone at the counter.
Get a chat box requesting OK to pay.
Touch [Yes]
What are we waiting for?
We can be paying for small items every day by phone instead of credit card – faster, easier, safer.
We have the technology. All that’s in the way now is fear – the technically less at ease, will be afraid of a black box that debit $3 through your Android phone, that’s for sure.
The dumb ass media will fill hours of prime time TV with scare-grandma stories, “they’re not only watching you, now they’re drawing money from your phone”.

Europe is already a good way into smartphone commerce – it’s not even new anymore.

Your credit card won’t disappear, but part of it will live in your iphone / droid. Your fastrak transponder may eventually disappear, as may your proximity card that gets you into your office / store / apartment building. Your phone can do all of this, starting early 2012.

The fact is this technology is safer and more fraud resistant than credit card transactions. However, it further pushes back personal privacy and the intrusion into our personal lives by our phones, phone carriers and marketers who would just love to access all our location based activity as available through our phone usage.
Who’s on the consumer’s side?
Phone manufacturers, app publishers, and consumer advocacy groups. Well, except that some consumer groups promote fear and misunderstanding around privacy concerns.
Who doesn’t have our best interests at heart?
Phone carriers. They resist innovation, hiding behind FCC and other bureaucracies, and generally get dragged kicking and screaming into every new chapter of mobile technology. They also fail to protect our data from predatory marketers’ sometimes dubious methods. Also, data peddlers, who will continue to find new and better ways to sell highly targeted consumer data to marketers; you can’t argue with location based ATM information linked to a consumer’s phone number and email: “please give me all the people on Madison Avenvue right now, with household income >$200K, who have bought something in the last hour from Macy’s/Bloomingdales/etc purchase price $>200. Push to their phones an ad for Brunch at Henry’s”.

This is fascinating stuff and no doubt wrapped in some red tape that still needs to be cleared, and still faces some consumer hesitancy, but I think we’re ready.
And why hasn’t Paypal taken over the world via Facebook? Why do I still write checks to friends, my equestrian trainer, by tennis coach and my maid? I should ping them instant cash over Facebook to their Paypal account. I should never write another check. But that’s the financial sector = slow….