GSM announced that the worldwide use of mobile phones for payments at point of sale is the aim of a new initiative announced by the GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade organization for mobile operators. The announcement is a sort of spin-off from the 3GSM conference. During which conference operators also announced their ambitions to be more active in the remittance market: "By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable. "
And still there are regulators around that claim that the mobile phone is not a payment instrument but merely a communication tool that is only incidentally used for payments...
I always wonder, don't those regulators have kids that spend 50% of their pocket money on payment via mobile phone? And don't they try it out for themselves?
Last week I joined the crowd here in the Netherlands and sent an SMS to vote for X6; a womens group running up in the Dutch X-factor (sort of Idols). Of course I got a response thanking me for the vote, but also another invitation to send in another SMS to increase my odds for winning a free ticket to next weeks' live show.
And then, this sms was again followed up by another quiz-question inviting me to sms the right answer and once again increase my odds. I was quite curious how many questions they had for me. The answer: 5 more questions (and as I flunked one, that meant 6 more SMS's costing 0,60 euro). And only one of those sms-es had a warning: don't sms too much.
So much for my contribution to the more than 1 billion euro revenue for Dutch data services (2006).
