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By Miguel Helft, senior writer July 9, 2012: 5:00 AM ET
Tech giants - and startups like Square - want you to use your phone to pay for everything from gum to train rides. Here's how they plan to achieve cash-free nirvana.
FORTUNE — Café Grumpy is the kind of hipster hangout that wouldn't deign to trumpet itself. Tucked away on a quiet street in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, it's easy to miss. There's no sign out front, just a frowning face stenciled on a large shop window. And yet when I walked in for the first time, I immediately felt like one of the regulars. "Charge it to Miguel," I told the barista after ordering a cappuccino, and charge it he did — to my phone. Not that I ever pulled my iPhone from my pocket. Seconds after the barista tapped my order on Grumpy's minimalist register — an iPad mounted on a stylish countertop stand — my phone vibrated in my coat pocket, signaling that our transaction was complete. I couldn't wait to check that everything had worked as promised. (It had.) For the first time ever I was tickled by the act of paying for something.
Perhaps you, too, have experienced a gee-whiz moment at the checkout counter when you used your phone to pay for a Starbucks (SBUX) latte, a blouse at Macy's (M), or a box of screws at Home Depot (HD). Perhaps you've read how smartphone payments, already popular in parts of Asia and Europe, are coming to the U.S. in a big way. Or you may have read about Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, who is now disrupting the byzantine world of payments with his new company, Square. The white-hot San Francisco startup is already responsible for many breakthrough products, including the so-called digital wallet app I used for my touchless, cashless cappuccino purchase at Grumpy. (The café is a Dorsey favorite, and he steered me there. The coffee's good too.)
These are telltale signs that the mobile-payments revolution has arrived. But what the glowing profiles of Dorsey — he's often compared to Steve Jobs — and the breathless predictions about your phone replacing your wallet don't tell you is this: Changing the way Americans pay for stuff is going to be really hard work. For starters, retailers and their partners will have to offer mainstream shoppers some pretty sweet perks to get them to replace a swipe of a plastic card with a tap of a phone. Then there's the chicken-and-egg problem: Merchants don't want to upgrade pricey point-of-sale terminals so that they can work wirelessly with smartphones unless e-wallets become mainstream, and e-wallets won't become mainstream until consumers can use them just about everywhere.
And it's not just innovative startups like Square that hope to reinvent payments for the mobile era, but also everyone from mega-technology companies to financial institutions, giant telecoms, and national retailers. Until those companies agree on common technology standards and platforms, mobile payments won't work across devices, wireless networks, credit card types, and retailers. (Imagine if Target (TGT) took only an American Express (AXP) card that had to be triangular, Wal-Mart (WMT) took only a round US Bank (USB) Visa and a square Citibank (C) MasterCard, and Starbucks would let you pay only with a prepaid Starbucks card. It's that absurd.)
Yet once these issues are sorted out — and with so many billions at stake, they will be — cash will find itself on the endangered-species list. Paying by phone will be as transformative as the advent of the credit card in the 1950s.
Tech giants - and startups like Square - want you to use your phone to pay for everything from gum to train rides. Here's how they plan to achieve cash-free nirvana.
FORTUNE — Café Grumpy is the kind of hipster hangout that wouldn't deign to trumpet itself. Tucked away on a quiet street in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, it's easy to miss. There's no sign out front, just a frowning face stenciled on a large shop window. And yet when I walked in for the first time, I immediately felt like one of the regulars. "Charge it to Miguel," I told the barista after ordering a cappuccino, and charge it he did — to my phone. Not that I ever pulled my iPhone from my pocket. Seconds after the barista tapped my order on Grumpy's minimalist register — an iPad mounted on a stylish countertop stand — my phone vibrated in my coat pocket, signaling that our transaction was complete. I couldn't wait to check that everything had worked as promised. (It had.) For the first time ever I was tickled by the act of paying for something.
Perhaps you, too, have experienced a gee-whiz moment at the checkout counter when you used your phone to pay for a Starbucks (SBUX) latte, a blouse at Macy's (M), or a box of screws at Home Depot (HD). Perhaps you've read how smartphone payments, already popular in parts of Asia and Europe, are coming to the U.S. in a big way. Or you may have read about Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, who is now disrupting the byzantine world of payments with his new company, Square. The white-hot San Francisco startup is already responsible for many breakthrough products, including the so-called digital wallet app I used for my touchless, cashless cappuccino purchase at Grumpy. (The café is a Dorsey favorite, and he steered me there. The coffee's good too.)
These are telltale signs that the mobile-payments revolution has arrived. But what the glowing profiles of Dorsey — he's often compared to Steve Jobs — and the breathless predictions about your phone replacing your wallet don't tell you is this: Changing the way Americans pay for stuff is going to be really hard work. For starters, retailers and their partners will have to offer mainstream shoppers some pretty sweet perks to get them to replace a swipe of a plastic card with a tap of a phone. Then there's the chicken-and-egg problem: Merchants don't want to upgrade pricey point-of-sale terminals so that they can work wirelessly with smartphones unless e-wallets become mainstream, and e-wallets won't become mainstream until consumers can use them just about everywhere.
And it's not just innovative startups like Square that hope to reinvent payments for the mobile era, but also everyone from mega-technology companies to financial institutions, giant telecoms, and national retailers. Until those companies agree on common technology standards and platforms, mobile payments won't work across devices, wireless networks, credit card types, and retailers. (Imagine if Target (TGT) took only an American Express (AXP) card that had to be triangular, Wal-Mart (WMT) took only a round US Bank (USB) Visa and a square Citibank (C) MasterCard, and Starbucks would let you pay only with a prepaid Starbucks card. It's that absurd.)
Yet once these issues are sorted out — and with so many billions at stake, they will be — cash will find itself on the endangered-species list. Paying by phone will be as transformative as the advent of the credit card in the 1950s.
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