After overcoming a series of technological hurdles, mobile phones are on the cusp of being used to make contactless payments, the CEO of Weve, David Sear, has said.
Speaking at the annual IAB Mobile Engage conference on Thursday, Sear said that 2014 is the year in which there will be a “massive shift” in the way people use their mobile devices and that consumers are at the “tapping point” of contactless payments.
“We are almost at the point of being able to use our mobile phones for physical purchases – tapping them like we do contactless cards,” said Sear. “And it won’t just be one player,” he added, as he forecast that the next model of Apple’s iPhone will have payment abilities.
Weve, which is a joint venture between EE, O2 and Vodafone, has services including location based messaging, app discovery messaging, targeted push SMS and video messaging, as well as having additional products in development – including a ‘wallet service’ focused on loyalty, vouchers, payments and data analysis.
Building upon deep sources of mobile engagement data, the company analyses first-party customer data to produce insight that will create one of the industry’s “most intelligent mobile advertising and m-commerce platforms,” according to its 2013 launch CEO Nancy Cruickshank.
As contactless payments via credit and debit cards become the norm, Sear said that the desire for consumers to be able to use their mobile phones for payments – devices that they are “emotionally attached” to – is a natural progression for the relationship between consumers and smartphones.
“We trust our devices – they contain our lives – and payment is a natural extension of that trust,” said Sear.
The news will be welcomed by advertisers as contactless payments will help turn mobile advertising investment into a full purchase journey.
Mobile advertisers in the UK already spend more trying to reach each mobile internet user in the country than anywhere else in the world, according to estimates by eMarketer.
James Chandler, head of mobile at Mindshare UK, said last year that the rise of the constantly connected consumer will have huge implications for advertisers.
“68% of the UK mobile population now own a smart device,” Chandler wrote in an article on Newsline.
“As the contents of our physical wallets – credit and loyalty cards, travelcards, ID and entry passes – move across into digital wallets on our smartphones, the mobile data footprint this leaves behind will power highly relevant and targeted opportunities for advertisers.”
