Judging by the amount of coverage, it looks like the concept of using a mobile phone as a wallet is heating up again. But as critics point out, there is still a lot of work to be done to make this successful. Fortunately, the technical issues, such as poor user interfaces, are relatively solved and most of the remaining sticky points revolve around business issues. For one, how is the money going to be distributed among the players? Banks don't see much of a reason to support it if they have to give a cut to the carriers, and operators seem even less interested in getting handsets out there to support m-commerce without receiving some fee.
For more about m-commerce heating up again:
- read this report from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)