As you may have heard, Apple is currently in talks with Visa and other credit card companies about a mobile payments partnership which will allow iPhone users to link their phones to their credit accounts and make purchases everywhere. It's unknown yet if Apple will use something similar to the NFC (near-field communication) technology utilized by other mobile payment options such as Google Wallet or if it will be something Apple develops on its own but our guess is it will be both to allow NFC purchases in store and Internet purchases with just a click. Some of us already use the NFC technology on our phones to make purchases. An example is the Starbucks mobile app which allows us to link our cell phone to our Starbucks store card and just hold our phone close to a receiver at a Starbucks cash register to make purchases.

This new payment strategy is inevitable, will be embraced by consumers and businesses, and has many implications. For example, cell phone users are estimated to be around 5 billion by 2017 and mobile payments are estimated to grow to $90 billion in 2017, from $12.8 billion in 2012. This new payment strategy will also have some implications around cell phone theft and fraud which users have to be educated about as they start using it. On the bright side, this payment evolution will also improve payment security in some ways and make our wallets lighter as it will consolidate our credit cards into one single payment mechanism on our cell phones although it is expected that there will be more cell phone payment technology providers.

In case you missed it, here is the latest cell phone theft and fraud statistics:

https://www.identity-theft-awareness.com/smartphone-theft-statistics.html

Until next time, Be Identity Safe,

Henry Bagdasarian
Identity-Theft-Awareness.com

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