Payments Council: Mobile payments system ‘expected this year’

A lot of people are going mobile these days, and enterprises are slowly following suit. There’s power in mobile, and it’s easy to see and understand why. A recent report by Cisco detailed just how massive the expected growth in mobile is, as the firm predicted that these devices would soon outnumber the entire human population by the year 2016.

One thing that mobile offers is convenience. Aside from letting users check their email, browse the Internet, or stream media while they’re on the go, it also lets them shop online and even make payments. There have been a lot of developments on the mobile payments front, and you might soon find yourself paying for your meal at the restaurant with the use of your phone.

Now the Payments Council has announced that a scheme for mobile payments is set to be implemented this year. The scheme will make sending money via mobile phone as easy as sending a text message. Users who choose to sign up for the service will have their phone numbers and account numbers linked on a central database.

The Payments Council also revealed that the initiative will be made available to banks and building societies before year’s end. Users will be able to access the service using any smartphone that has an internet connection on any network.

Richard Martin, who is head of innovation at the Payments Council, said that mobile payments was a “rapidly developing marketplace” with “limitless” possibilities. He stated: “What we’re doing is offering a common infrastructure that any institution can plug into. Our role will be to set out some minimum security requirements. Our proposition is giving consumers the option of simply and quickly firing off an electronic payment.”

Martin added: “We have deliberately designed the mobile payments system to be as flexible as possible; it is not tied to a particular operator or handset. We have found over the last few years banks have launched mobile banking applications which you can run on iPhones or my grandmother’s four-year-old Nokia. Inclusivity is one of our key objectives. We want to design a service that reaches out to as many people as possible.”