Next Generation Network Financial Services would include:
- Payments and electronic fund transfers. Consumers are increasingly comfortable with paying for goods and services and transferring money via mobile devices. Subscribers can use their mobile devices to pay for home-delivery shopping services, vending machine and in-store purchases, taxis, and purchases at fuel stations and other retail outlets. Mobile devices can also be linked to credit card accounts allowing them to function as a contactless card at the point of sale. Finally, peer-to-peer payments that allow consumers to perform electronic payments to each other offer new revenue streams for mobile network operators.
- Mobile banking. As well as the basic functionality of receiving payment alerts for security purposes, other components of mobile banking will enable customers to use their mobile phones to manage their accounts, pay bills, and transfer funds. Consumers in advanced markets such as Japan, South Korea, Austria, and Norway have already demonstrated the acceptability of these capabilities.
- M-Wallets. Mobile wallets have the potential to be much more significant than (Internet) e-Wallets, by eliminating conventional identity documents and plastic credit cards, in addition to giving consumers access to cash. A digital wallet in a mobile phone can store all a subscriber’s personal data in a mobile network, including storing consumer information such as passport information and health-care records. For networks, m-Wallets are an important component of m-commerce (traditional transaction processing and payments) by allowing subscribers to shop wirelessly, securely and quickly with their wireless phones. m-Wallets also reduce churn considerably because once a network holds a subscriber’s wallet, it is much more difficult for them to transfer all of that information to another network – similar to the anomalously low rates of churn in consumer banking. Dynamic information about mobile devices coupled with networked information can also link subscribers to the physical infrastructure of their banking network.
- Mobile ticketing. Mobile ticketing allows device users to purchase tickets for events, transportation, and parking. These services have been widely adopted in Europe and Asia, where consumers use mobile devices to feed parking meters and purchase cinema, train, and ski lift tickets online or at unattended point-of-sale terminals. Research predicts that the market for mobile event ticketing is currently $44.3 billion worldwide.