Consumers,these days, are buying more smart phones than ever which can be attributed to the success of platforms like Apple and Android! The incredible growth of the App Store model has resulted in consumers having access to Smart Phone applications for just about anything. Their is also an increasing adoption and willingness to adopt these devices for accessing various services including Gaming, Media, Internet Browsing, Navigation and Travel. But one of the most significant areas that these devices and apps have started penetrating into is the payments and banking space.

Mobile payments is a very broad space today. We can broadly classify all of the Mobile Payments initiatives in 4 main tracks namely:

Mobile Commerce (purchasing digital & physical goods through the mobile phone)
Mobile P2P payments & Money Transfers
Mobile POS Payments (ex: Tap & Pay)
Mobile Banking & Bill Pay

Each of these tracks have attained different levels of maturity across the world today and some of them like Mobile Banking have much more wide spread adoption than the others. Some parts of the world have made advancements in these areas than the rest.

The success of Mobile Payments and its growth will depend upon a variety of factors including - willingness of consumers to adopt, readiness for operators and financial institutions to collaborate, investments by retailers and merchants to add new POS infrastructure, not to mention the support from regulators. Even though security concerns exist surrounding mobile payments, a recent study indicated that consumers are willing to adopt Mobile Payments.

The mobile payments space is heating up with many industry players launching new pilot initiatives and making market announcements. Different stakeholders in the value chain are making investments and attempting to cement their position to realize the benefits of this new growth engine. Is there room for them all? I will share my thoughts on the Mobile Payments value chain and different players in my next post.

Clearly, mobile phones are becoming the "Swiss Army Knife" of this digital world with people willing to use them for just about everything. And now they are poised to take over our wallets. Are we ready!?