Digital Money held their forum in London, and the presentations are now online (middle left – presentations – speakers). For more detail on the decks, go to the wiki.

Here are insights from the leaders in the new payments space, and Banks must listen, and think about the implications. Its a unique opprtunity to see data on Paypal, and thoughts from emerging leaders including Vodaphone, Mi-Pay, Tesco, and Peppercoin.

I noted this page from the Peppercoin deck, which asks a set of higly relevant and strategic questions.

Small Payments and mobile based payments

Contactless payments, and mobile phone based contactless systems area a disruptive force in the existing payments industry …

So interesting questions arise …

How will financial services institutions react to increasing efforts from the large telecommunications players?

Will issuers one day issue free mobile phones with contactless payments embedded?

Are we facing a large cashless society? At least among young people? How much does mobile content and mobile payments accelerate the trend away from cash?

Relevance to Bankwatch:

This is a classic example of technology disruption coming fast. I saw a backstreet parking lot in Toronto, with cell phone payment. This is here now, and its real. Banks will benefit from reduced cash handling costs but what about the transactional revenue opportunities, and the threat to balance depletion? Those will be real issues for Banks'.