Starbucks and Apple: Mobile payments’ sleeping giants? – Mobile Commerce Daily – Payments.

Tradition vs Opportunity in Travel

To me it is not about who is the big guns in hand held payments, because mobile-pay will be ubiquitous and it will not matter. What is important is how it will impact hotels and tourism suppliers. To be sure TripAdvisor is looking at this closely with its new mobile app, but has got stuck with partnering with the traditional distributors like Expedia and booking.com. It’s all old school and not a big priority for OTAs as they already have their own systems.

A New Gateway to direct Bookings

What is different is now we may have more open payment gateways, available to small companies like hotels and tourism operators, and that opens up more opportunities for direct bookings.

Apple & Starbucks: Handling your Cards

Apple is talking about mobile payments with Visa and other credit card companies and maybe the company’s entry into the mobile gateway for payments is imminent. Apple controls hundreds of millions of cards and devices that can be linked to those cards,” he said. “They are perfectly positioned to be a key player in the space.

Starbucks is already in that space with mobile payments now accounting for over 15 percent of transactions in its stores. However, translating this success into a technology platform for other merchants could be a challenge.

Apple already has credit card account data for millions of consumers through iTunes. Its mobile loyalty app Passbook is well placed with with both merchants and consumers adopting it. Thrive Analytics found that 17% of consumers have used Passbook and 60%say that they use Passbook weekly compared to 49 percent for Google Wallet and 40 percent for PayPal (see story).

Apple – Is it talk no play, no pay, in mobile travel?

One word on the comment that apple is talking not doing and some question if it will actually move ahead. My take is that Apple will move ahead when it’s ready, and as it has done many times will take a commanding lead. It does not have to be the leader, it was not with iPod; sonny was with its MP3 players, but apple understood the users needs, with a vision far beyond other players … the rest is history.