Will gambling be what makes m-payments fly?

Those of you who read my missive on Mobile World Congress earlier this week will have seen that payments through mobile had a very high profile at the show. Visa and Mastercard are both on board with mobile payments projects with with Vodafone and Telefonica respectively and many other bit part players were also on hand to offer their wares.

Now Visa Europe has invested in a 15% stake in our chums at Mobile Money Network.

Things in mobile payments are really moving apace. The move by these big brands to get on board means that very soon public confidence in mobile as a payment channel will go through the roof and we will really start to see this move as a market. Finally.

But what does this mean for the telemedia sector? Well its good and bad news. The big boys muscling in on mobile payments means that suddenly things are very competitive. On the Brightside though, there should be such an uplift in consumer confidence in mobile as a billing tool that direct to bill mobile payments are going to explode.

And there will very much still be a role for PSMS and payforit led microbilling for not just all the things that they currently used for, but increasingly for all manner of other micro-purchases around the social and retail sectors.

The growth in mobile payments for all manner of services – both digital and real world – is going to have a knock on effect across all manner of vertical markets: and it is within these that telemedia really has its opportunity.

The main areas are of course those that we are concentrating our events programme on this year, namely: gambling, sports, live events, media, marketing and commerce. While there is much that can be delivered with telemedia as ‘premium content’ across all these sectors (which the events will major on), the billing and payment side of things is, both figuratively and literally, where the money is.

Our forthcoming m-gambling event on 25 April and our Mobile Sports Summit on 26 April feature extensive sessions on billing and payment (featuring luminaries such as OpenMarket. WorldPay, Ukash, ixaris, StubHub, Consult Hyperion, Zappit, Sports Revolution and Oxygen8), but also aims to bring the whole telemedia family into these verticals, offering them the chance to parade their expertise and experience in front of dedicated audiences from the gambling sector and the sports business.

In May we are delving into the connected digital entertainment space, again bringing dedicated audiences from the worlds of TV, print, online, marketing, live events and commerce/retail to learn what telemedia – and payments and micropayments in particular – can do for their businesses.

Between them, these four events help set out telemedia’s table in some of the many vertical markets that telemedia can start to deliver benefits – not least through payments. Next year we hope to add more (why not let us know which verticals you’d like us to tackle?).

But the current mainstream interest in mobile as a payment channel – now on the mainstream news thanks to PingIt from Barclays and now Visa and Mastercard’s entry into the fray – creates the perfect environment to win new business and start to place telemedia where it should be at the heart of commerce.