First Data's GO-Tags -- the first step toward mobile commerce?
The mobile industry has been WOEFULLY inept at dealing with mobile commerce. Appalling. There’s a heck of a lot of hesitation going on.
Only a few years ago, some mobile operators were doing their best to avoid getting anywhere near mobile commerce. Now, as revenue plateaus and the data market is moving swiftly to flat rate — without any innovation — attention is most certainly turning to other ways of making money.
Want to wave your phone at the newsagent to pay for your newspaper?
Dream on. It’s going to take a 500lb behemoth of a gorilla to step in and sort out the industry.
As it happens, we have that — in the form of First Data, one of the world’s largest merchant account processors.
They’ve come up with a solution that could, theoretically, be adopted tomorrow. It’s called GO-Tag. It’s a little sticker that you can put anywhere (think: Back of your mobile phone?) and you can use it much like an Oyster card (the RFID card system used for the London Underground train service). Swipe at a reader and the relevant balance is debited from your account. That could be your mobile phone account. Or bank account, or Starbucks Coffee account. It wouldn’t take much of an imagination stretch for the likes of Vodafone to issue all its contract customers with a little GO-Tag each. Put it on your phone, your coffee mug, your forehead… any time you use it, transactions are debited from your Vodafone account.
THAT would be excellent.
First Data have published a white paper about this — Contactless Payments: Consumer Trends and Usage Preferences (PDF). If you’re anywhere into Near Field Communications, this is worth a look. More about their GO-Tags here (PDF).
