Gone are the days when Cash used to be the King.
Well, the past century saw the introduction and extensive use of Plastic Money such as Debit Card or Credit Card. Each one thought they had the perfect solution with them as far as financial transactions are concerned.
Plastic Money had eased our lives by manifold. Bill Payments, shopping, fund transfer, and everyday money transactions were now easily carried out by the use of Plastic Money. Life had now become much lighter as you were not necessary required to carry loads of cash with you every time when you moved out of your house or did money related transaction.
However, this was not destined to be the end of evolution of money. As there were distinct disadvantages of using cash, there are also distinct disadvantages of using Plastic Money. The obvious ones being loss or theft of your credit or debit card (plastic money). These are the biggest problems people are facing with the use of plastic money.
Everyone was looking forward to a smarter solution that was easy to use, safe and secure. Thanks to technological advancement, you have finally got a smarter solution. The solution comes to you in the form of Mobile Wallet. So now you don’t have to carry your wallets, instead simply use your Smartphone, and it will easily handle all your money transactions for you.
Equipped with ‘Near Field Communication’ (NFC) Technology, your Smartphones are ready to revolutionize the way you shop, make bill payments or do other types of money related transactions. Mobile Wallet or, what is more, popularly known as Mobile Payment is an alternative method of making payments.
So you don’t require to use either cash, check, credit or debit cards. Simply use your Smartphone and shop or make payments for a wide range of services. Mobile Payments or Mobile Wallet is increasingly becoming popular all around the world. Moreover, it has been projected that combined global market for mobile payments would exceed $600B by the year 2013. And that’s not all, as by 2014 NFC technology studded mobile phones will account for 50% of mobile phones across the world and sale of NFC equipped cell phones would exceed $75 billion by the end of 2013.
So you see that Mobile Payments is fast catching with people all across the globe. From the security point of view too, using Mobile Payment is absolutely safe, and there is no tension or fear of loss of your wallet either. The Mobile Payment Technology comes with data encryption, remote locking, passwords, pin-protected, memory protection so that you can safely carry out your transactions from the ease of your mobile handset.
Mobile Wallet or Mobile Payment has been based on NFC Technology. This technology is one step ahead of the contactless payment terminals that you get to see at restaurants, gas stations, or local stores. The technology allows users to tap their credit card adjacent to an NFC Terminal. With NFC Technology data exchange occurs between two devices through physical touch. It requires an initiator as well as a target. The initiator generates radio frequency field ranging to about 4cm. The target gathers the radio frequency and receives the data carried through these radio frequency. The transactions get completed in a matter of few seconds only.
Different mobile manufacturers are fast adopting this technology so as to support NFC Technology on their handsets. The good news is that this technology will eventually not handle just payments; it will also allow customers and stores to keep and handle all traditionally used wallet items including ID Documents and also Transit Passes.
Benefits of using Mobile Wallet
Mobile Wallet offers several benefits to users. Let us have a glance at the benefits offered by Mobile Wallet:
- Fund Transfer is relatively cheaper with Mobile Wallet as compared to traditional money transfer.
- Can update a consumer account and can reveal how many rewards have been made by the customer.
- It also reduces the purchase complexity for consumers as well as for merchants.
- Retail offers for consumers.
- Alerts in case of fund deficits and overdraws.
- It allows the consumer to choose a credit card (in case he or she has more than one) which offers maximum number of rewards points.
- You can track buyers habit and can even perform customer analytics.
- Easy refunds and charge-backs and many other benefits too.
So, you see that there are various benefits of using Mobile Wallet or Mobile Payment. The mobile payment space is already abuzz with several mobile technology companies gearing to launch their devices studded with NFC Technology to support Mobile Payment or Mobile Wallet. Together with this there are several Apps through which you can run Mobile Wallet service on your cell phones. One of the best examples of Mobile Wallet App is Google Wallet.
The App is available both for Android and iPhone users. You can use the App to send money to anybody in the US who has an email address. You can transfer money from your bank account or from your Google Wallet Balance. Using Google Wallet you can also save all your loyalty cards and offers. It even works with NFC-enabled phones. Moreover, Google Wallet comes with 24/7 fraud monitoring so that you can rest assured of an absolutely safe wallet.
So, now with Mobile Wallet or Mobile Payments you can surely say goodbye to heavy wallets stuffed with cash and plastic money and enter a new world of effortless, safe and easy fund transfer or everyday money transactions including purchasing and bill payments.
