The age of paying by smartphone is here

Apple Pay has revolutionized a sector that has been talking for a long time about the need for change, but that has shown itself slow to adopt new procedures.

Since the company announced its new payments system, there have been some important developments: eBay has announced the long-awaited spin-off of PayPal, and that probably comes to late to convert the company in a serious contender. At the same time, Square, now valued at $6 billion, has launched a new $590 million financing round in which the Singaporean government has contributed $150 million; a resounding success for Jack Dorsey’s company, which is growing rapidly and even talking about an IPO at some point. To what extent the company can keep this up, or is simply being fattened for market is hard to know: what is clear however is that for the moment, it is one of the best entry point for any company looking at taking on Apple.

Rumors that it was talking to Google in April this year about an acquisition have been firmly denied, but that doesn’t mean that at some point down the road they won’t happen; perhaps with another buyer: Apple’s announcement changes everything.

And now, to make matters really interesting, we learn that Facebook is working on its own payment system using Facebook Messenger, which explains why the company has been insisting for months that we install a specific Messenger application, a topic we have discussed recently. The idea we could to add a credit or debit card to the app so as to use it as a P2P payment system.

What seems clear is that sooner or later, and after many years talking about it, we will soon be using our smartphones to pay for things. Where will it end? This morning I used the thing as an alarm clock, as a torch after I got up so as not to disturb my family by putting the lights on, then to read the news and check the social media, took a few snaps, used the map facility, sent a text message, got my emails and voicemails, monitored my exercises… and could have carried out any other number of tasks using any number of apps. And now it’s a wallet.

Next it will be an ID card or driving license, making it the most important item we carry with us, and without which we would be lost, literally in some cases; and all this over the space of less than a decade. Quite simply, amazing.

(En español, aquí)