Cornering the m-payments market

Payments is very much the top of the agenda this week, with not only news that txtnation will be presenting Transactional SMS (TSMS) at World Telemedia Amsterdam (12-14 October), but that the world and his wife are all getting their mobile payments products lined up and ready for the build up towards Christmas.

Forget NFC and, I think, we can also try and forget the O2-Vodafone-Everything Everywhere tie up to develop cross platform payments and marketing offerings (we can forget that for now, unlike 3 UK which is trying to take the big three to court for leaving them out. Aww, bless). What we have on our hands is a radical rethink in payout rates on PSMS – dressed up as TSMS and direct operator billing – sweeping the US, Europe and Ireland (and coming to the UK real soon).

The move to put PSMS on a 90% payout rate and hide it behind a one click payment button is just what the world needs and will be the thing that makes mobile a mass market payment tool.

Direct operator billing is going to corner the market in mobile payments for digital goods, while TSMS is going to see PSMS essentially being used to buy real things like cans of drink from vending machines and tickets from ticket machines (which are then virtualised and put on the phone, but they are then used in the real world, which makes them tangible enough for me).

This is a magnificent step forward and I think places telemedia right at the heart of m-commerce, where it should be.

And that is reflected in the seminar programme for World Telmedia Amstedam, which while it seeks to uncover the best in interactive media, marketing and commerce, always circles back to payments. Mobile payments is going to be the cornerstone of the m-commerce and m-media worlds once it gets going as it encompasses everything that you want consumers to do.

Getting them to your site, store or service is essential, and this can be done by offering special offers and money of if they use mobile to pay. Once they are engaged with you, you can again get them to do things that require micropayments and you get them to use mobile to pay. While they are chatting, or on social networks or interacting, voting or doing anything else around TV you upsell them and use mobile to pay. If they are in a shop and want to buy something – use mobile to pay.

You see mobile payments is the core of m-commerce in all its forms, and the telemedia industry owns microbilling – you know that together these things are awesomely powerful. So get yourself along to World Telemedia Amsterdam and get the inside track on where m-payments is going.