Today Mobile Wallet Media and its founder and chief editor, Randy Smith, introduce an invention that may solve the problem of standardization in mobile payments.

NFC or Near Field Communications technology is broadly used in Japan to enable mobile payments. NFC replaces the swipe of a magnetic-stripe through a credit card terminal. With NFC, the consumer taps their mobile phone, equipped with NFC, to a payment terminal also equipped with NFC. NFC uses a short range radio signal to transmit card credentials. Here in America, despite years of best efforts by Google, ISIS, MasterCard, Visa, major banks, mobile carriers and many others in promoting NFC as their technology of choice, NFC is still only present in less than 10% of retail payment terminals and smart phones in use today.

This delay of adoption has opened the door for several alternative methods to surface. PayPal, LevelUp, Square, Tabbedout, Dwolla, Mocapay, Paydiant, Corfire and mFoundry offer alternative solutions to NFC such as the scan of a QR code, mobile check-in or display of a code, name or picture to the cashier. This has effectively worked to fracture the market, thus preventing the formation of an industry standard similar to what we have with magnetic-striped credit cards. Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) was recently founded to solve the problem of standardization in mobile payments. A few of the MCX retail partners are Wal-Mart, Target, The Gap, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Shell and 7-11.

So what is the invention? The invention will enable a mobile or digital wallet to utilize any mobile payment technology adopted by a retailer. A retailer must be registered for a mobile wallet using the invention’s technology. The mobile payment service provider must also be integrated to work with the invention’s technology. A single mobile app or website is used complete transactions using the invention’s mobile payment switch.

How it Works

1) Login into mobile app, 2) Verify store location, 3) Within a single mobile app or web site, the invention enables the use of the mobile payment technology adopted by the retailer, be it NFC, scanning a QR code or any other method and will be white-labeled or connect to the native app’s interface and technology to complete the transaction.

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