The future of payment is not mobile
The thing about card payments is that it’s a legacy technology and hence it will be replaced by an alternative media that can communicate more freely with the world around you. One that is not bound to the physical nor digital realm.
The most viable option at this day and age seem to be mobile payments with organizations such as Square and the Sweded iZettle leading the way.
The important thing to distinguish however is that when payments are moved to your mobile phone it’s not actually the phone (eg. iPhone) nor is it the app (eg. Square) that is the replacing media but rather with a account from a bank offered through a service, hosted through an app and made made available through your phone.
This account is not bound to the phone, nor necessarily to the app – it could be a layer to which you would connect from several different services depending on your needs. Much like Facebook Connects distribute the social layer to several different services I believe the future of payment is not an app but rather an infrastructure with an open datastructure and API for it’s users to mold into the experience they are searching for.
If I owned a bank this is what I would focus my digital strategy on, not an iPad app or a smarter internet bank - let the users build that.
