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Money reinvented
There are many innovations in mobile-phone money-transfer technology, but it’s too early to tell which methods will become widely adopted

Texts instead of stamps Direct payments by phone

The Danes and the Swedes
For direct payments by phone, the cellphone acts like
have introduced SMS
a debit or credit card. Here are two kinds of cellphone
stamping for their postal
money transfer methods
services: The phone woks like a debit
that stand a good chance card. Instead of a magnetic
In Denmark, the letter sender of becoming widely adopted: band, the device displays a
1 texts “porto” to the number barcode.
1900 Barcodes
• The cellphone displays a barcode
2 They immediately get texted
back a numeric code, that gets read by a store’s optical
reader
which is valid for seven days
• The money is withdrawn immediately
The sender writes from the consumer’s
3 the code on the bank account
envelope
This method works for
This method is already
part of an iPhone
application for
$630B
regular Starbucks Possible value of
50 g letters weighing less
than 50 grams. customers. mobile payments
by 2014

Near Field
Communication Cell phone

Protocol (NFC)
• The cellphone uses NFC Protocol,
which is a form of Wi-Fi.
4 • A consumer has to pass his or her phone
within five centimetres of a terminal to pay
Actual
The charges
$170B
NFC could be used for many different kinds of distance
are sent to the analogue payment methods: Tolls for public
sender’s transport, hotel room cards, VIP access at
Estimated global galas and concerts and cellphone-to-cellphone
value of mobile cellphone bill money transfers.
payments in
2010 An NFC standard is still far from being adopted
Terminal
and there are certain security problems that
need to be fixed.

Cash still useful

The use of cash has been declining in North America since In Canada
the 1990s. However, there are advantages to using so-called
“liquid” money: Rogers has been working toward By 2015, Rogers expects
getting globally accepted virtually every Canadian
• No transaction fees payment methods such as Visa, with a smartphone will be
• Transactions are still possible during a blackout MasterCard and American able to pay with proximity
• Cash forgotten in wet clothes can be dried and reused Express to work on GSM smart- devices at many large
— try doing that if your phone falls in water! phones with NFC for five years. retailers.
Sources: Post Danmark; The New York Times; How Stuff Works; Wikipedia JUSTIN STAHLMAN/QMI AGENCY