Canadian consumers are ready and willing to pay for everyday goods with their mobile devices but a lot of details have to be ironed out before that can realistically happen, experts say.

More than 80% of Canadian industry players feel certain mobile wallets will be “mainstream” in this country within the next four years, a recent KPMG International study found.

Before that can happen a lot of questions need to be answered including who will be responsible for managing credentials, what happens if a transaction fails and who’s on the hook for fraud?

“Mobile payments are on the cusp of being real in Canada. Consumer demand will be a key driver, but few companies have a strategy in place for taking advantage of this opportunity,” said KPMG’s Ian Shelley.  Read More…

12 Comments

  1. Right now Google and Apple are poised to be the ones who might be able to bring this NFC payment to the mainstream, not big banks. I give it at least another 5 years before we even see its presence, but another 2 years before retailers adopt en masse.

  2. Sounds like a great idea! Less stuff to carry in my pocket.

  3. The article raises a good point that the real bottleneck is with retail adoption. They dont want yet another hefty fee imposing on their bottom-line. They already pay at least $0.30 for each process requests to big banks when you use your credit card.

  4. I still dont understand what the whole point of it is.

  5. Seems like it will end up being more complicated than what i just do now which is to swipe my card and thats it.

  6. And iPhone says: ‘There’s an app for that’. 😉

  7. I am amazed this isnt here all this time. What is with the holdup. We are clearly going to head in that direction so get it over with already.

  8. You raise a good point. I never thought about that. How does one solve the problem of a lost phone with credit card details on it?

  9. Not sure it will experience wide adoption by the consumer since this is rife with potential theft. If i understand this one would have their credit cards on the phone. So what is stopping a person from stealing the phone and having full access to buy anything they want.

  10. Whichever handset provider with accompanying software gets this right will have an uneard of advantage. As of right now only Apple is in the perfect position to get it since they have full control of software and hardware and all of their carriers will do anything Apple wants. The real question is will the retailers also jump aboard.

  11. Oh great! And i was just getting use to the whole idea of the Chip + Pin method. Now this?

  12. The rest of the world outside North America has been using mobile payments for years now. We need to catch up. And quick!

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