Mobile money industry looks ahead to a crucial year
Representatives from banks, operators and payments networks closed this year’s GSMA Mobile Money Summit agreeing that the next 12 months could be a crucial period for the evolving mobile payments market. “Over the next 12 months we will see a significant amount of momentum, but we’ll also need to agree on a set of standards and a single standard eco-system,” said MasterCard’s Rajen Prabhu. This was a theme also taken up by RBS’ Ron Karpovich – representing the banks – who warned that the industry should guard against a fragmented approach. “It’s like we’re all building ATM machines with different functionality,” he said. “Business cases will all work better if they can interact with each other.” Representing the operators, KDDI’s Yasuyuki Koide said he was “concerned that so many things are on the table right now; are we confusing customers?”