Handset manufacturers, Carriers and Banks alignment

During the first days of mobile banking and payments, many debates raged about the different roles of mobile operators and banks. Will banks and mobile operators compete and how will they interact with each other were some of the questions asked.

During the past period, discussions regarding mobile payments almost always featured a third category. In a large percentage of announcements, the handset-manufacturer also plays a role. Collaboration between banks and carriers regularly include references to the device manufacturer too. Some examples of such announcements are:

• Samsung, Lloyds and Visa to offer mobile payment enabled handsets for the London Olympics (Read here).
• The collaboration between Nokia and Yes bank and Union bank in India (Read here)
• The Google wallet (read: Nexus) initiative only available on the Sprint network (Read here)
  

Many other examples can be found, but suffice to say that most handset manufacturers are busy trying to define their role in the new payment eco-system. In the process alliances are formed, implied and broken. The problem with this reality is that is likely to become even more difficult to develop a payment solutions that is fully ubiquitous - and this goes against the whole idea of a universal payment schema. It would probably be better for handset manufacturers to stay away from payments...