2010 may be the breakout year for mobile payments in North America.Using a cell phone to pay for things hasn’t been a priority here but look at the rest of the world. Vince Kadar president of Ottawa’s Telepin says…"the developing world runs on cash. That’s how they do business but it has limits. There are about 3 and half billion cell phones in the world, only about one billion of us have bank accounts, what do the other two billion do ? That’s our market."Telepin provides the software platform for phone carriers to provide a wide range of cell based money services. Telepin doubled their client count in the last year, they signed a deal with Canada’s Wind Mobile to provide mobile payments but so far only on your Wind account.A week ago PayPal revamped their mobile payment system. In Vancouver, Verrus Mobile’s system lets you pay your cab bill by phone. Boku of the UK raised $25 million for its mobile service; Square of the US has soft launched technology to link your credit card to your phone.This Sunday Ottawa’s Heart Institute Telethon will feature for the first time a new technology where a special barcode on the screen is scanned by your smartphone camera. You can make a donation in seconds. The technology comes from MobioID of Vancouver. CEO Clovis Najm tells me "this technology will be popping up on everything from T-shirts to billboards letting people pay for things" That is just what’s happened in Australia.

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