As the number of people purchasing smartphones continues to increase throughout 2009, as more users look to attach data plans to their voice plans, the number of things a smartphone can be used for also is increasing.
Specifically, companies are working on e-payment options that give users multiple ways to access banking information, pay bills, among other features. Research group Juniper Research believes there will be more than 150 million people using mobile Internet to access their banking online by 2011.
If you told me a year or two ago that the number would be 150 million, myself -- along with many of you -- probably would have shrugged off that idea. Since then, it has become increasingly easier to make payments and check online bank statements using my BlackBerry Curve, and it continues to get easier. Along with online banking, I also routinely use my smartphone to send and receive money through PayPal.
Although more prominent in Europe, Americans also are getting the ability to purchase for bus tickets, train tickets, credit cards, and make other purchases using their enabled "wallet phone."
There is still a lot of confusion regarding mobile payments, but the confusion will likely work itself out in the future.
"There are hundreds of different [payment] solutions out there - both on the Internet and on the mobile, so the challenge for the mobile operators is also working out which bet to place on which [payment] operators," European TowerGroup research director Gareth Lodge recently said during an interview. "At the moment I can make a virtual credit card payment on my virtual PayPal credit card on my BlackBerry on a web site - at the end of the day is that an e-payment, a mobile payment, a credit card payment?"
Mobile phone operators and credit card companies must now try and convince users to use their smartphones to make payments.
Are you using your mobile phone to handle online banking? If not, why not?
