The Risks and
Opportunities in a Mobile
Commerce Economy

The era of the electronic wallet is closer than you think.
In fact,  it’s here now and it’s red-hot.

When secure  payments, real-time banking and highly targeted marketing comes  to cell phones,  BlackBerry® devices, iPod®  digital media players and other connected devices, it will represent the biggest  opportunity in the history of commerce. Which industry players win, which ones lose and which ones simply sit on the sidelines has everything to do with decisions  being  made and deals
being  forged right now.

By Barry McCarthy
President, Mobile Commerce Solutions
First Data

Author’s note

This paper  is part of a series being presented by First Data on the ongoing development of mobile commerce solutions. First Data believes—and I  personally  believe—that the  rapid proliferation  of wirelessly  connected mobile  devices, primarily in the  form of  cell  phones,  is revolutionizing  how  people monitor their  financial resources,  make important  purchasing  decisions  and pay  for transactions in the  field. But it is unlikely that First Data’s  viewpoint as a company, or my personal  thoughts as a commerce industry veteran, is completely accurate. With each new day, we learn a great deal more, we hear from new and sometimes previously unknown potential  partners and we discover  consumer patterns and behaviors  previously unseen. So, if these  papers do nothing more than stimulate thinking or even cause strong disagreement, they will be considered successful. It is my deepest hope that you will pick up the phone or write an e-mail message sharing your own thoughts and visions. And that you will begin  the important planning and discussion within your organization  and with your strategic partners  that will position all of us for success. To sit by and wait while others define  the standards, suggest common practices and divvy up revenue streams is to fail—that  much we can be sure of.

This paper  provides  an overview of the mobile commerce landscape. Additional papers will offer  more detail on the concepts discussed here.

Testing the Future of Mobile Commerce on the
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System
Imagine for a minute that you are one of the 370,000 daily riders of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system that crisscrosses  three counties in the San Francisco region. Only today, instead of swiping your monthly BART EZ-Rider Pass Card or purchasing  another  paper  ticket,  you simply pull out a special  Sprint®  cell phone  and wave it at the turnstile at your local station. On the way  to your train, you notice  a billboard advertising the latest  sandwiches at Jack in the Box® restaurants.  Just tap your phone to the poster  and download directions to the nearest  location.

While riding into work under  the  San Francisco  Bay, it’s easy  to check  your BART EZ-Rider account balance directly on the cell phone and, because it is getting low, transfer funds from your checking account to increase your balance. Then, switch over to view your Jack in the Box Jack Cash™ account balance (courtesy of a birthday gift card from Mom) and there you discover  a sufficient  balance remains to take a few  co-workers to lunch.

On your way into the office,  stop and get a coffee—again, simply by tapping your phone to the terminal (you are now one drink closer to that free  latté).  At lunch, you once  again pull out your cell phone  and touch  it to the payment terminal. The cost  of that  lunch for you and your co-workers is deducted directly  from the gift card  balance from Mom, less a coupon  you received overnight on your phone,  and you are all on your way. Since you left the house this morning, you still haven’t had to reach for your wallet.

The reason I love to give this example  of how mobile commerce might work in the future is because it actually just happened and quite  successfully so. Through a partnership  with several  companies, including my own,
230 regular BART riders were,  in fact,  issued one of those  special  Sprint phones  for a four-month  trial. Using Near Field Communication  (NFC) technology and  secure  provisioning,  those  phones  became the  payment method  not just at BART stations, but Jack in the Box restaurants,  as well. Multiple existing account types from multiple sources  were  all successfully working on a single device.

This one experiment taught us several things and served as proof-of-concept for a variety of mobile commerce services.  But it only scratched the surface  of a deep and almost unlimited sea  of opportunity (and potential roadblocks) for  merchants,  for  financial  institutions,  for  advertising and  marketing  agencies, for  wireless carriers, for technology developers and most importantly for consumers.

Cooperation and Partnership  Are Critical for Mobile
Commerce Success
If I had to identify the biggest challenge in executing the BART example above, I’d say it was in bringing the various technology, financial services, retail and public entities together to agree on the goals of the program and the methods by which things would happen. Training consumers was easy: if anything, they wondered why it had taken so long for this type of quick and efficient transaction. (BART officials reported 165–175 transactions took place per day with the NFC phones, indicating a high degree of use among the 230 program enrollees.)
So, many important things had to take place for this test to go smoothly and together they serve as a good foundation for the points I hope to make in this paper:

• For the consumer, it was critical to establish  that the system  was secure  and that any loss of the cell phone would not mean loss of account balances.
• For BART and retail merchants  such as Jack in the Box, it meant the investment in NFC (near-field communication)  technology readers  and programming,  as well as the appropriate infrastructure  to issue and redeem electronic coupons.
• For Sprint, it meant embedding a special chip inside each  phone and setting up an infrastructure  that
• allowed third parties to send and receive financial information to and from that device.
• For First Data, which processed the financial transactions, it meant tying together multiple account types on a phone.
• For technology partners, it meant developing software and hardware solutions that could support  the transactions and open new marketing opportunities.
• And for the advertising and marketing firms supporting BART and Jack in the Box, it meant thinking of entirely new ways to reach consumers and leverage this exciting  and highly personal communication vehicle.

We all know, however, that a limited and somewhat controlled test is not a guarantee that similar practices will translate  to wider and even  more complex  markets. But so many things are coming together and critical mass for enabling technology is so close that the BART test  serves,  if nothing else, as a wake-up call to anyone who thinks banking, payments and marketing over mobile devices is something  off in the distant future.

Rapid Technology Deployment Is Transforming
Commerce at Breath-Taking Speed

One of the primary reasons so many of us in the financial services  industry are excited about mobile commerce is the sheer size of the opportunity. By many estimates there  are currently over three  billion mobile handsets in use worldwide. This is considerably greater than the number of active credit/debit cards. So, as a method of cash-free  commerce, these  devices open  entirely  new  populations.  Several  projections  show  that  soon, the number of mobile handsets in the United States will actually exceed the population,  as consumers  adopt multiple connected devices.

Let’s think about  that for a minute. I’m not suggesting, of course, that every  cell phone user will automatically become a good credit  risk or a highly qualified  buyer.  But that’s  the  point of mobile commerce initiatives— they can accommodate and streamline the existing credit/debit card systems  in place  but also reach entirely new markets in entirely new ways. Say your teenager needs lunch money for the school cafeteria or for taking the bus to an after-school job. Or, an out-of-town guest wants  short-term  access to local commerce without using a credit  card or carrying  around a lot of cash. Or, you want  to clearly separate and track business  and personal expenses, even at locations that don’t accept credit cards. The most likely common factor in all these situations is the existence of a cell phone.

The existence of billions and billions of mobile device handsets is only a small part of the  equation. Yet  it is the  foundation of everything to come,  and if you don’t accept that  these  devices can and will serve  as the “electronic wallet”  of the future, then the rest of this paper  is going  to be hard to swallow.  Just look, though, at how mobile handsets have  already  become the calendar,  photo  album, address book, entertainment and music storage device and more in peoples’ lives. Doesn’t it seem  clear that  they  will become the conduit  to financial transactions, as well?

The major wireless  carriers all think so and  most  have  initiatives now  underway to  test  and  deploy mobile commerce technology and services  on their customers’ handsets.

Two-Way Communication Is Coming Soon

Of course,  for mobile handsets to work effectively as an electronic wallet,  an infrastructure  must be in place of devices that can securely read and process the information contained on those phones. These “contactless readers” are similar to the magnetic-stripe terminals in place  at most retail locations  today.  It may seem  like upgrading and installing new devices in the more than seven  million merchants  and businesses is going  to be a long and arduous task. But let’s look at the adoption curves  of some current technology and see  how, with each  round, the cycle  gets shorter:

• It took 28 years to reach 100 million mag-stripe credit card accounts.
• It took 12 years to reach 100 million debit  accounts.
• It took seven  years to reach 100 million PayPal®   accounts.
• It took six years to sell 100 million iPods.

Projections  currently show that:

• It will take only five years to reach 100 million contactless credit/debit cards.
• It will take only two  to three years to deploy 100 million NFC-enabled mobile handsets.

Perhaps more important, however, from a mobile commerce standpoint is not how many NFC terminal readers are entering  the  market but  where  they  are going.  If you look at the  Standard  Industry Classification  (SIC) codes representing high-volume  transactions (quick-service restaurants,  convenience stores and drug stores) and match them to NFC device installation, it is likely, by the end of 2008, that  over 40% of the transaction volume in these  categories can take place  using contactless terminals.

The 40 percent milestone is critical, because we learned during the rollout of Personal Identification Number (PIN) debit  card payments  that after  that level of penetration, adoption  speeds up significantly and the technology quickly becomes the  norm. So, I  believe  we  are no more than 12 to 18 months away  from the  sort of market adoption  of contactless terminals that will raise consumer awareness and demand to “tipping  point” levels.

Plus, it is always  dangerous to underestimate the  effect of consumer  demand.  In the  first two  weeks after launching its new iPhone™ App Store, Apple saw over 25 million downloads take place  of third-party programs that extend the capabilities of the iPhone. This shows a keen interest  among mobile device users to add new features, services  and capabilities to their handsets. Mobile commerce is not something  consumers  are going to resist or that has to be forced upon them.

Several  Stages of Mobile Commerce Adoption

I  believe that  to fully understand the  likely roll-out of mobile commerce solutions and grasp  the  impact  this new  technology and lifestyle  change will have  on business models, you first have  to break the process down into three somewhat distinct areas:

• Mobile banking and accounts. This is the delivery of basic account information to the handset. It is the minimum requirement  moving forward  and likely the first to see  implementation.
• Mobile payments. This refers to the ability to use information stored  on the handset to conduct valid, secure,  real-time transactions.
• Mobile marketing. This refers to leveraging the knowledge of consumers  and the immediacy of handset delivery for true one-to-one opt-in marketing.
  

Enabling and overlapping technologies and practices affect all three of these  areas and some pertain only to one of the three. In many cases,  technology developments and consumer practices that start in one area are necessary foundations for spreading adoption and growth in the other areas.  That’s why getting your head around the important stages and breakthroughs is tough—it’s a bit like a big jigsaw puzzle  in which the final picture  is only clear when enough pieces are in place.

Let’s look at a couple  of examples:

• Before  a marketer can take advantage of new information about  consumers’ purchasing  patterns and target them with an opt-in text  message to their cell phones—say, based on previous mobile purchases—a system  must be in place  for tracking, storing and instantly accessing that purchase history data. It is unlikely that that will fall into place  before basic banking account information is flowing to the handset. So, the systems  that financial institutions are establishing  today  to deliver account balance data  are the bridges being  built to more complex  financial transactions and marketing in the future.
• Suppose a start-up company has a brilliant idea of how to bring micro-payments to the handset in a way that is much more merchant  friendly. Probably,  because of existing systems  in the marketplace, basic credit and debit  card transactions will arrive to the mobile marketplace first.
• And although  new mobile handsets may soon contain all the appropriate hardware necessary to make NFC transactions, it may be that interim solutions (such as chip-embedded adhesive stickers placed on the handset) need  to serve  in a limited capacity during the handset-replacement cycle.   Companies  like First Data have already launched  this technology under the brand “GO-Tag™ sticker.”

The important point is that many of the solutions being put in the marketplace today  are important bridges to a full-blown mobile commerce landscape. The problem is, if these  bridges aren’t strong enough,  open enough and with enough regard  for future  capacity, they  will fail and set  back  progress. Imagine if your electronic wallet  were  provided by your bank – but  only allowed that  bank’s  information to be  displayed, not all the other  accounts important  to  you.   Imagine if your mobile  service  provider  managed your wallet  and  only allowed certain banks’ information to be displayed – but not your bank’s information. I would hate to see that happen and it is one of the reasons for speaking out now. Some of the proposals being floated and tests being currently  conducted seem  ill-suited toward anything  but  short-term  gain. This is certainly  an area  in which consumers  are unlikely to embrace proprietary  systems  and practices limited to certain devices or accounts.

There Is a Lot at Stake and Plenty of New PlayersThere Is a Lot at Stake and Plenty of New Players

The  deployment  of  truly  secure   mobile  commerce  solutions  that  deliver  real-time   account  information, secure  payment options and the ability to deliver dynamic and targeted marketing requires cooperation and partnering  on a scale much greater than any previous commerce technology. Today’s  consumers are not going to be  satisfied  with limited options,  conflicting  systems  and opportunistic financial models. And neither  are the vendors  and beneficiaries of mobile commerce transactions:

• Advertising  and marketing agencies want systems  that fairly provide  access to clients across mobile platforms.
• Carriers want to protect and monetize  customer  access but realize that they cannot  deliver mobile commerce services  completely on their own.
• Financial institutions and associations  have strict compliance issues that must be met and also want to be sure transaction  revenue remains in-house.
• Trusted service  managers that will be necessary to make an electronic wallet succeed will only deploy large, secure  data-processing facilities if access to customers is open and available across systems.
• Technology developers recoup  investment only after  achieving scale and so are unlikely to favor proprietary relationships.
• Merchants  see  mobile commerce as an opportunity to shift the payment landscape their way and at the same time promote  brand and drive loyalty.

Clearly, we  must discover  solutions and deploy systems  to consumers  that meet  as many of the above goals as possible. How these  new business models emerge is critical. I have often,  in presentations, compared what is going  on today  in mobile commerce to the  early days  of the  World Wide Web.  Yes,  we  must experiment, try out new  partnerships  and deliver a variety  of solutions to consumers.  But we  shouldn’t do anything  that destroys the basic  ability of people to conduct business  when  they  want,  where  they  want  and with whom they want.  And just like the early days of the Web, standing  on the sidelines will be a mistake.

Understanding the Mobile Commerce EcosystemUnderstanding the Mobile Commerce Ecosystem

Let’s  look a bit more in-depth at the  three  areas  of mobile commerce I  mentioned  above. I  think that  when you begin  to understand those  divisions and the opportunities ahead for each,  the fundamentals start to fall into place.

Banking/Accounts

Most financial institutions would prefer to limit access to account data and use it to directly leverage customer relationships. But with over 7,000 financial institutions in the United States alone, that makes any sort of cross- bank agreements difficult.

Yet for mobile commerce to emerge, consumers  must be able to gain access to account information and use it in a variety of situations, not just those  that benefit their own institution. So major banks and other financial service  providers simply must find a way to share customer  account data.

This point is critical: Consumers will not remain loyal to financial institutions, credit card issuers or other financial partners that limit access to their accounts or make it difficult to use those  accounts in the field.

So, before we can move ahead with any great speed toward universal mobile commerce solutions, the banking industry must take  positions,  develop partnerships  and find ways  to allow customer  access across  multiple institutions without  compromising customer  data  or security.

Mobile Payments

For the electronic wallet to happen, payment options must become even easier than they are today.  And they are already pretty easy—simply choose a card, swipe  it, click a few  buttons  on a terminal and sign your name. Credit-card associations  are actively  working  to bring this ease  to mobile commerce and several  interesting tests  are currently underway. But clearly a couple  of things have to happen.

First, systems have to be developed that can place  and process multiple accounts all in one place. It is unlikely that consumers  or the banking industry will accept a single master account scenario, so mobile devices must have the ability to store, retrieve  and help process multiple accounts from multiple sources  all in real time.

Second, there  has to be  a physical mechanism for securely  provisioning this information to the device and it has to be  lower  cost  than current  provisioning mechanisms. Today,  the  provisioner puts  much security  and other data  onto the magnetic stripe.  Tomorrow, that information must instead  get into the phone itself.  This will likely take  place  over wireless  networks,  but in the short term, other solutions, such as pre-programmed add-on NFC devices, may be deployed.

Critical to mobile payments is a system that is secure, can win consumer confidence and ideally works efficiently enough so that even  small, local merchants  can join in. For any form of payment to work, it minimally has to:

1. Be in consumers’ hands.
2. Be accepted by consumers  for use.
3. Be acceptable to and adopted by merchants.

Mobile Marketing

Much of the reason  to invest in mobile commerce infrastructure  is tied to possible  revenue opportunities for advertising and promotion. The direct delivery of opt-in marketing to consumers based on purchasing  habits, intent-to-buy analysis and even Global Positioning System (GPS) data is high-value stuff. If the industry allows over-the-handset marketing to go the way of e-mail spam, the game  is not even  worth playing.

So,  a  lively  debate is likely to  ensue   as  to  who  controls  customer   access, who  delivers  marketing  and advertising messages and who pays for that delivery. If you thought it was tough  finding the right advertising and marketing model for the Internet, then hang on.

But the prospects of mobile marketing are so profound  that many large companies are jumping in now, even before all the commerce elements are in place.  The ability to send a customer  buying incentives  immediately before, during and after  the purchasing  cycle  is the holy grail of marketing.

So, I hope it is clear that none of this can happen in a vacuum and that there is inter-dependence in the mobile commerce ecosystem between  many key  players.  If the  systems  being  built don’t accommodate  financial institutions, merchants,  advertisers, technology developers, wireless  carriers,  device  manufacturers, credit card associations  and—most importantly—consumers, they  won’t work and the United States will fall behind the rest of the world in modernizing  retail commerce.  In this scenario, everyone loses.

Of course,  I believe that there  is room for everyone in the game  and plenty of opportunity to spread around. Yes, some companies and institutions that dominate  commerce today  may take a slightly different role in the future. And surely new  companies not typically associated with commerce will play a new  and perhaps  even prominent role in the transactions of the future.

If you look at the music business as an example,  there are several lessons to be learned. Many of the large music publishers were  slow to acknowledge the impact that digital technology was having on music distribution and sales. First, consumers bypassed the system entirely through file sharing and other copyright-avoidance schemes. The music industry responded with expensive legal challenges but still did not provide a reasonable alternative, trying instead to hang on to old commerce models. Then, Apple opened its iTunes™ Music Store and within a few years became the largest  retail provider of music in the world, much to the dismay of music publishers. Now, any attempt to go back and present an alternate plan is likely to fail or be many times more costly.

All of us who are vested in the retail-transaction process should think of ourselves  as being  in the same place music publishers were  ten years ago. We may love our current roles and business models and we may even find plenty of reasons to suggest that these  new transaction  models will never work. But if we don’t get together and choose our own paths, then I can just about  guarantee someone else will do what’s necessary and throw us all an unexpected curveball.

The Immediate and Not-So-Distant Future

The BART example I gave at the beginning of this paper  proves that mobile commerce is already here and that many of these  concepts can certainly work as imagined. Here’s how I see  things unfolding over the next few months and I’ll also take my best  stab at some future scenarios.

First—and we are already seeing  this thanks to always-on Internet access using smart phones  and devices like the Apple iPhone—consumers will begin  seeing  bank account and credit card data  directly on the displays of their mobile devices. Any ability those  people have at home to interact  with financial institutions can now be carried with them into the field.

A persistent Apple iPhone user could, in fact, walk into a retail establishment today and pay for a purchase using a credit  card, debit  card or even  a PayPal account directly over the Internet in real time, much as they would if ordering the item online. Of course, this is impractical, but it demonstrates that the connectivity needed for true mobile commerce is in place.  I see  the more controlled  networks  of the mobile carriers being  the primary vehicle  for mobile commerce, but wireless Internet connectivity is a definite  factor  in the equation.

After consumers  become accustomed to checking account balances on their mobile devices, they  are going to want to access them. So the first payment options likely to surface  on mobile devices will be existing credit and stored-value accounts. In fact,  using a product like First Data’s  GO-Tag  sticker (an NFC-enabled sticker that attaches to the back of an item such as a mobile device), companies are already transitioning customers from mag-stripe stored-value cards to NFC versions. Soon, many gift cards will come  with both a mag-stripe and an NFC sticker, giving consumers  the option.

Mobile commerce will, I  believe, ultimately  revolve  around  the  mobile handset. Standardized chip sets  are being  built now that will enable future handsets to interact  with NFC terminal devices. But even  now, hand­ held NFC devices are entering  the market in the form of key chains, wristbands and all sorts of other formats. I like to say that NFC capabilities will go through three stages:

• Outside  the phone (we’re there  today)
• On the phone (thanks to add-on stickers, chip-embedded cases,  etc.)
• In the phone (thanks to chips embedded in the device)

Next,  we’ll  see  the  evolution  of NFC payments from stored-value to  credit  and  debit,  after  the  banks  get on board  and NFC terminals reach  critical mass. Then, we’ll start to see  lots of innovation and new  forms of payments enter  the  marketplace that  do not necessarily  rely on existing  account types.  Many of the  three billion mobile phone users out there are not participating in existing payment systems,  but they spend  billions of dollars and represent perhaps  the biggest  opportunity in commerce in history.

And of  course,  along  the  way,  the  mobile device as a marketing  vehicle  will only become more and  more powerful.  But because it is a fully opt-in  marketing  vehicle,  the  challenge rests  entirely  with the  merchant community to figure out what sorts of offers  and opportunities will garner customer  acceptance.

Yes, much of this will be hard work and we are likely as an industry to make some false steps  and still learn a few lessons. Even if we figure out all the technical  issues and present the market with a sound, workable  solution, consumer behavior  is not completely predictable. But imagine for a minute that everything I’ve discussed has gone  smoothly: It’s a year or two in the future and once  again you are on your way to work on the BART train. Only this time . . .

Walking out the door, you do a quick check  on your iPhone to find the lowest-price gas station between your house and the commuter  parking lot at the BART station. When you select the Shell® icon, a coupon  appears that’s  good for a free  car wash with fill-up and a coupon  for a free  size upgrade on a cup of coffee. Because you’re  running late today, you’ll take  advantage of the car wash  offer  later, so just store  the coupon  in your phone and drive directly to the station. On almost every other day, you stop at the Starbucks  down the street, paying  with the Starbucks®  Card stored  in your phone.  But not today, because you buy coffee at Shell with the free upgrade you received just moments ago.

After  swiping  your phone  at the  turnstile, you rush to the  BART train, just making it before the  doors  close. About  halfway  to San Francisco, you get a text  message from Starbucks  (because you indicated your desire to receive these  communications when you signed  up). “We missed you this morning! When you get a minute, drop in to any Starbucks  and use this coupon  for a free  size upgrade. If you would like to use GPS to find the closest outlet,  just click here.”

On the BART train these  days, the advertising is all interactive. So, before getting off at the downtown station, you make a few  quick swipes  with your phone to see what your favorite  lunch spots  are offering  in the way of specials. Mmmm . . . 20 percent off the classic meatloaf  sandwich at Max’s!

But today, you promised your wife that you’d  pick up a new laptop  computer for your daughter’s graduation present. At Best Buy, you’ve got  it down to three different models. Now, just tap your phone to the display in front of each  brand and see what incentives  might be available. Sony is offering  a $200 mail-in rebate, which, if you use your Best Buy account, will be  credited instantly—no  need  to submit paperwork. HP will give  you either a free  printer or an extended three-year coverage plan. And Apple  will give  you nothing, but because you have an iPhone, they send you an e-mail telling you how cool you are.

You choose the HP® laptop,  because the extended warranty sounds appealing as your daughter heads  away for college. At the register,  another offer comes  through, this one from American Express. Use your Gold Card and get double  points. Another quick pass of the iPhone and you’re  on your way. You finally return home and see your leather wallet on the counter where  you left it this morning. You suddenly realize that you don’t need it anymore.

Next Steps  and a Request

So, what  does  all this mean to you and what  should you be doing,  right now, to make sure opportunity does not  pass  you  by?  Well, of  course  that  depends on your business  and  the  role you  want  to  play  in mobile commerce. But I can suggest a few  important steps  and encourage you to seek out more information.

• If you carry customer  account balances, the most important thing you can do is get “in the phone”  with that information, even  if it’s in a rudimentary fashion. You need  to show customers that you are mobile savvy and are working to provide  them with access to their information when and where  they want it.
• If you are a retail merchant,  start making plans for accepting NFC payments. You may not be able to do it overnight or all at once,  but the best  way to get there  is to budget now and work the terminal upgrade fees  into your business plan.
• If you are a technology developer, look for established partners. It is unlikely that the existing financial community is going  to take any big chances on unknowns. So, get out there  and make allies.
• If you are in marketing or advertising, start paying  attention to how consumers  interact  with mobile devices and start thinking about  how you are going  to get them to check  “Yes” when asked  if they want to receive offers  and communications  from your client.

And for everyone, start talking up mobile commerce with your current partners and seeking  out new partners. In the United States, we don’t have oversight bodies  to make milestone decisions for us—we’re free to go with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, with VHS or Beta,  with MasterCard,  Visa, American Express, Discover or STAR.
I hope  you will seek  out our other papers on mobile commerce, which go  into much more depth on all these issues and take a much more direct look at the many options and obstacles we all face moving forward.

And now, the favor part: I really want to hear your thoughts on mobile commerce. Obviously, at First Data, we see an important role for our company as the world moves toward the electronic wallet. But we have no illusion that we  will achieve success for our partners  and ourselves  by acting  alone. The Mobile Commerce Solutions division at First Data, which I head, was set up specifically so that we could focus on this important area. Right now, that means reaching  out, sharing our data  and insights, learning from others and thinking a lot.
So please, contact me or any member  of my team.  We  not only want  to  help,  we  want  to  listen. I  can  be reached directly at barry.mccarthy@firstdata.com.

For more information, look for these  forthcoming white papers at http://www.firstdata.com/about/whitepapers.htm:

• Mobile Payment—The Linchpin of the Mobile Commerce Economy
• Going Direct with Mobile Marketing
• Mobile Account  Management—The Mobile Commerce Enabler
• The Role of Trusted Service  Managers in Mobile Commerce

About The Author

Barry McCarthy was appointed to lead the newly formed Mobile Commerce Solutions business unit of First Data in January 2008. He has responsibility for commercializing all First Data assets  globally for use in mobile commerce. In this role, McCarthy  and his team  work closely  with a variety of industry partners, from the largest wireless carriers to young  start-ups, financial institutions, technology providers and terminal manufacturers.

Previously, McCarthy led Global Product and Business Development for  First Data  and  before that,  product development for the Commercial Services  business unit. Prior to joining First Data, McCarthy was Vice President and  General  Manager  of  VeriSign’s  Internet  Payments
& Risk Management business  unit, a NASDAQ 100 technology company.
Before  VeriSign, McCarthy co-founded and later sold MagnaCash, a Silicon Valley micro-payments company that is currently owned by Digital River (NASDAQ: DRV). Previously serving  Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) as Vice President  and  General  Manager  of  the  ATM business, McCarthy had P&L responsibility for $110 billion in annual transaction   volume  and  14  million active  ATM cards. McCarthy   started  his  career   at  Procter   and  Gamble (NYSE: PG), where he spent 12 years in roles of increasing responsibility,  first in sales  and sales  management and later  in customer   marketing  and  brand  management. He earned   a  Masters  in Business  Administration  from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and completed his undergraduate studies  at the University of Illinois, Urbana.