Will Mobile Payment Morph Into A Less Cumbersome Form Factor?
Written by Evan SchumanJune 18th, 2009
With the flood of information now available on mobile phones, there comes the question of how practical today's form factor is in a retail environment. Was watching a video of a talk given a few months ago by Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab (thanks to TechImage's Lawren Markle for the heads up) and it raised quite a few questions that should make m-commerce retail execs feel very uncomfortable.
Maes makes the point that the data being made available to today's smartphone is fine, but it's rarely practical to reach into one pocket to access. At a conference, for example, "You don't shake somebody's hand and then say, 'Can you please hold on for a moment while I take out my phone and Google you?' When you go to the supermarket and you're standing there in that huge aisle of different types of toilet paper, you don't take out your cellphone and open a browser and go to a Web site to try and decide which of these toilet papers is the most ecologically responsible purchase."
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I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
