This Week: The Mobile Payment Movement

There has been a lot of interesting news in the world of mobile payments this week.

On Monday, Square (owned by Jack Dorsey, who also created Twitter) announced that they were releasing a 'register' of sorts for merchants, which is basically an iPad app that uses analytics to track sales and manage inventory. This will be complemented by a consumer-facing component (in the form of an iPhone app) called Square Card Case, which will make it easier for customers to pay for good/services at any establishments using the Square Register. I've been a fan of Square since I first heard about it, and I can attest that it's a wonderful service. I'll be watching these guys closely to see what they come up with.

Yesterday, Google announced a similar product called Google Wallet that also purports to make payments easier on customers by letting them store credit card information in a "wallet" app, but currently only works with Android phones and only at merchants with NFC technology in place, such as MasterCard PayPass. The possibilities here are pretty exciting too, but I doubt it will truly take off until they expand the number of compatible platforms (the most obvious one being the iPhone) and more merchants come on board with NFC.

Finally, and this is an interesting one, Paypal (who also has an interest in mobile payment) is suing Google and two Google employees who formerly worked at Paypal and are now in charge of the Google Wallet project. They claim that these employees have stolen Paypal's trade secrets, although the lawsuit does not implicitly state the word "wallet" anywhere. This announcement coincides with the release of Google Wallet but apparently the lawsuit has been in the works for quite some time already.

I expect that a lot of news will be forthcoming in the next few years as the idea of mobile payments spreads, along with plenty of startups looking to get in on the action. In the end, the real winner here will probably be the consumer, being faced with so many great choices. I'm thrilled to see that people are tackling such an enormous issue and look forward to seeing what new technologies will be unveiled in this arena.