Anticipation over the emergence of a broad mobile-payments market has gone on for years, and it might continue through 2012. Analysts instead believe financial institutions first will focus on person-to-person funds transfers.
“Banks are expected to make a big push for P2P, whether it’s through mobile or online,” says Ron Shevlin, senior analyst at Aite Group. “Everybody else is going to talk about mobile in 2012, but it’s not going to be the year of mobile payments.”
Financial institutions are moving first toward P2P, though the services likely will be mobile-based, Fiserv Inc. found in a survey released this fall (
For example, eight out of 10 banks contacted this year said they were planning to invest in mobile payments next year, with seven saying they are investing specifically in P2P payments. “They understand it is an element of a broader payment strategy with a mobile device,” Calvin Grimes, Fiserv mobile solutions manager, told PaymentsSource earlier in December.
Dennis Moroney, research director at TowerGroup, agrees that P2P activity will pick up in 2012.
“We’re expecting to see more technology emerge like P2P,” he says. “It’s going to be in fits and starts, with a couple of steps forward and a couple of steps back.”
Banks are more confident with offering P2P services because of consumer demand for convenient payment methods, Moroney says.
Indeed, companies such as Fiserv, which purchased rival CashEdge in September (
Chase, for example, this year began running TV ads that feature its P2P QuickPay service with a group of adults splitting a dinner bill using P2P via mobile phones.
Meanwhile, Fiserv’s CEO in November said his company is positioned to take advantage of a wave of expected growth in electronic payments such as P2P funds transfers (
What do you think about this? Send us your feedback.
