LIVE FROM THE GSMA’S NFC & MOBILE MONEY SUMMIT, NEW YORK: Mobile commerce executives laid out a vision of a future with increasingly pervasive technology and significant industry cooperation.

Richard Harris, CEO and co-founder of visual payment technology company Ensygnia, said retailers and mobile commerce vendors will work to improve how individuals interact with the world.

This includes developing technology for wearable computing platforms, providing new ways for people to order items, establishing identity andtokenising the things we use for identity”.

“It’s not so much about augmented reality, it’s about augmenting reality,” Harris said.

Sam Shrauger, global head of digital for developed markets at Visa, envisions technology in the retail environment becoming more pervasive: I think working together we will build a very strong ecosystem that is both safe and secure but leads us into that environment where you can walk in and your meal is already on the table in the restaurant.”

“It’s all about taking friction out of every aspect of the shopping, buying, paying, post-transaction experience,” the Visa executive added.

Seth Harris, founder of restaurant point-of-sale system Breadcrumb, now owned by Groupon, agreed with Shrauger that cooperation will become more widespread, as companies know how difficult it is to make progress with consumers when working alone.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more cooperation among a lot of the big companies than people really realise. It’s only through us all working together that I think we’re going to get there fast,” he said.

Carey Kolaja, VP of global solutions management at PayPal, noted there has been more progress made with mobile and loyalty systems at the point-of-sale over the past 18 months than the previous 10 years.

“So it all becomes about the velocity of when we will see this realised at scale, to the broader population. And not just in mature markets but emerging markets that don’t have financial systems now.”