A New Era for Mobile Payments

November 5, 2014
NACS Online
NACS viewpoint on the mobile payment landscape represented on Kojo Nnamdi Show.
​WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mobile payments entered a competitive new era last week with the launch of Apple Pay. But several large retailers, including Walmart and CVS say they won’t use the system, which works through Visa and Mastercard, in part because the credit card companies will still add fees for merchants. Instead, the big retailers are launching a mobile payments alternative, CurrentC, which uses a QR code and cuts out the major credit card companies.
On Tuesday’s Kojo Nnamdi Show on Washington, D.C.’s National Public Radio affiliate WAMU, NACS counsel Doug Kantor of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, provided an expert viewpoint on the future of mobile payments.
When asked what he sees in the mobile pay landscape right now, Kantor painted a picture of innovation that goes beyond just Apple Pay and Google Wallet: “Companies are looking at using Bluetooth technology to connect consumers and their phones to merchants. There are companies looking at using cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and others, as an easy way to pay.”
Kantor went on to explain the existing concerns with our existing credit card system, which Visa and MasterCard have dominated for more than a generation. “They’ve baked a lot of extra costs into the system,” said Kantor. “When you think about why we pay, with anything that we pay with, the question is what makes things more convenient and what makes things cheaper? Those are the real drivers of payments.”
For merchants, mobile payment innovation is a long-awaited opportunity to have some new competitors and break up the dominance in this market and bring operating costs down, while providing more choice for consumers
A recording and transcript of the full interview is available here.