The convenience and ease has great appeal for commercial transactions.
A growing number of businesses and consumers alike are beginning to use applications on their smartphones and tablets in order to use mobile payments to complete purchase transactions.
Simple to install device readers are popping up at the checkout counters of local merchants nationwide.
By using mobile payments, innovators are discovering new ways to help to minimize the mess that has become of the checkout process among all of the various options that are taking an increasing amount of time in the name of security and accuracy. Now, these same goals can be achieved in as little as a couple of touches of a device screen.
With mobile payments, cards no longer need to be scanned and there is less chance of data theft.
The process of mobile payments is quite simple in its use, as smartphones and tablets work together with the contactless readers at the points of sale, so that with a single wave of the device, the user’s identity is verified, the purchases are charged, the inventory is updated, and the receipt is sent via email.
This means that consumers who have the correct apps on their devices are able to enter a store’s brick and mortar location and use their device to view the inventory of the store, and then both locate and purchase what they would like.
The growth of the use of these transactions is aligned with that of m-commerce. According to Square, a company based in California that in 2010 developed a card reader that could be attached to a tablet or smartphone and has since built a user base of more than 2 million people.
In this year alone, many have predicted that sales in m-commerce would exceed $11.6 billion, which represents a growth of more than 70 percent over last year’s numbers. Now, large players ranging from Google and PayPal to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, have been investing into massive mobile payment projects with the support of each of the top global credit card companies.
With this type of support, there is little doubt that the upcoming years will see continued explosive growth of both m-commerce and mobile payments.
