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On first glance, this reminded me of similar P2P products that worked on SMS. Although it'd seem very simple for the average Finextra reader, their syntax proved too rigorous for the average payer, denying mainstream adoption of these products. This fantastic Q&A on Quora convinced that SQUARE has launched this new product more to gather Cards On File, a goal that it apparently failed to accomplish due to the lukewarm traction received by its SQUARE Wallet mobile wallet product.

According to this latest article titled Mobile payments: Endless hype despite precious little uptake, mobile transactions this year accounts for 2% of "all credit and debit card volume..., so mobile’s slice of the overall transaction pie is much smaller." So, mobile payments hasn't become mainstream even in 2013. According to GigaOm, it won't gain any real traction in the USA "any time soon".

In debates about cash v. cashless, we inevitably read a comment or two about how Sweden, another Scandinavian country, has gone virtually cashless e.g. here. Can anyone shed light on why fellow Scandinavian nation Finland has chosen to fortify ATMs against the same winters instead of following in the footsteps of Sweden and going cashless, thereby eliminating the need for ATMs altogether? Assuming of course that plastic cards and mobile wallets are "all weather". 

Kudos to St. George Bank. As a small business owner, I'm only too aware of the exorbitant costs and minimum floor plates of real estate. I predict that this one high-touch move will beat any high-tech initiative by St. GB towards attracting and retaining small business customers.  

In each of the four examples that I've quoted, there's only one MNO involved, so there's no question of money moving from one MNO's bank a/c to another MNO's bank a/c.

In the case of M-PESA, money does move from A's M-PESA a/c to B's M-PESA a/c. At the infra layer, maybe only bits and bytes move. But at the business process layer, A and B do perceive the movement of money i.e. payment, otherwise we won't be treating M-PESA as an example of "mobile payments" at all. And all this happens without involving a bank.

PingIt is not one of my four examples. However, from whatever I know about it, PingIt uses FPS to move money from A's bank a/c directly to B's bank a/c, without touching the two MNOs' bank a/cs. 

While I'm not aware of any rule in that regard, payment modes are generally denoted by what happens on the side of the payer and at the point of payment, not that of payee or collection. In any case, with M-PESA,  when A sends money to B, B can choose to keep the receipt in the mobile wallet itself. Even if B wishes to withdraw the receipt, it will be by cash at a cash-out agent, not transfer to a bank a/c. In fact, in all likelihood, A and B don't even have bank accounts.

Not really. Boku, Zong, M-PESA and Airtel Money are examples of mobile wallets that can be funded with normal cash or a mobile phone account without involving a bank account (or a bank card or any other bank product).

@AlexanderP:

I tend to agree with you and that's partly what I'd meant by "Personally, I find the funding method to be the most faithful representation of a method of payment." That said, I think it'd be very difficult to draw a line between form factor on the one hand and funding method on the other and avoid wondering if PingIt is a "true" mobile payment since it eventually uses a bank a/c as the funding method. I hope you get my drift.

I'm reconciled to having a couple of different definitions but all I ask is for internal consistency within each definition and acceptance of the consequences of the specific definition viz.:

• If somebody uses the expression "mobile payment" to reference every payment made from a mobile, then they must use the expression "desktop payment" to reference every payment made from a desktop.  
• If somebody claims that dongle-based mobile POS is mobile payment even if it only accepts the same old plastic card, then they can't claim that SQUARE will disintermediate banks. 

@AtulG:

TY for your comment. The confusion about what constitutes "mobile payments" is widespread! Let me simply copy-paste below my comment on another post on this subject: 

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If all 'payments involving a mobile phone' should constitute 'mobile payments', fair enough. By the same token, can the popular use be extended to call all payments made from a desktop "desktop payments" and ditto for "laptop payments"? Suddenly struck me that the 'e' in ePayments must stand for 'electric' since none of them will work without electricity.

I always expected different companies to choose different definitions of 'mobile payments' depending upon their vested interests. But, today I came across the same company quoting vastly varying figures for mobile payment spend. In this blog post, SwitchPay says, "U.S. Mobile Payments Expected to Top $1 Billion in 2013" whereas in an infographic on another blog post, the same company proclaims, "MOBILE PAYMENTS USAGE HITS $163.1 BILLION (in 2012)." 

This is getting even more interesting than I expected! 

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If all 'payments involving a mobile phone' should constitute 'mobile payments', fair enough. By the same token, can the popular use be extended to call all payments made from a desktop "desktop payments" and ditto for "laptop payments"? Suddenly struck me that the 'e' in ePayments must stand for 'electric' since none of them will work without electricity.

I always expected different companies to choose different definitions of 'mobile payments' depending upon their vested interests. But, today I came across the same company quoting vastly varying figures for mobile payment spend. In this blog post, SwitchPay says, "U.S. Mobile Payments Expected to Top $1 Billion in 2013" whereas in an infographic on another blog post, the same company proclaims, "MOBILE PAYMENTS USAGE HITS $163.1 BILLION (in 2012)." 

This is getting even more interesting than I expected!