Recently attended a Gartner presentation on the state of wireless .. some notes, on how this might play out in terms of payments:

They described a model with three levels:

1) Access
Cell
Wifi
broadband
etc

bundling

2) Network
email
voice mail
authentication
customer care

Content/ media
games
music
payments
ring tones
news

This model is telcoms centric – this is how they would view the world. In terms of potential payments providers, they fit squarely into the third part. The implication is that 1) and 2) are owned by the telco’s, and FI’s cannot significantly impact those, (unless they partner with a telco). So as a provider of payments, we would need tools that fit into the content/media space, which is defined by the telco in their devices.

The implication of that is that we are restricted by the tools, and customer navigation which is provided by the telco’s – FI customers will only find our services in the telco device if the telco wants us to.

This is not a strong position for FI’s, and is a very strong position for telco’s.