A new Harris Interactive study finds that mobile phone users are increasingly comfortable making banking and purchase transactions while on-the-go – a virtual taboo until now. The survey finds 16 percent of mobile phone subscribers already use mobile banking services, with 60 percent of these people using the services at least once a week. Many others presently not banking and buying on-the-go expressed interest in mobile banking, with 35 percent open to checking bank account balances and transferring funds via their mobile devices. A third of those surveyed (33 percent) also said they would like to receive text message alerts from their financial institutions.

The survey also finds that on-the-go mobile purchases are on the rise. About 25 percent of mobile phone users with mobile access to the Internet now use their devices to buy goods and services online via a credit card. One in five respondents (20 percent) said they would like to someday use their phones like a “mobile wallet,” where charges would be billed directly to their mobile accounts. In addition, ten percent of the survey participants said they would consider wire transfers and stock trading via their mobile phones.

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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c79207) has announced the addition of “Mobile Payments Making Progress in North America” to their offering.

Using mobile handsets to accomplish financial transactions and purchases is starting to appear as something inevitable in the worldwide marketplace. However, we do not believe that 2008 will be the year of mobile payments. It may not even qualify as the year of trials of mobile payments; However, there is evidence that the US market may overcome a crucial issue: technology incompatibility, and make progress toward contactless payments using cellphones.

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Few payment innovations have produced the stark schizophrenia that we are experiencing with mobile commerce. Normally somber business types are rubbing their hands together at the prospects of reaching consumers on a one-to-one basis, online, all the time, anywhere they happen to be. Meanwhile, typically apprehensive risk managers and security experts are wringing their hands at the potential for serious data incursions. Maybe risk managers know that, as often happens with payment innovations, the temptation is to get the new product into the marketplace as quickly as possible, then step up the security as needed to ward off attacks. One case in point could now be emerging among so-called smart phones, where the underlying programming is proving to be more vulnerable to hackers than some business types thought.

Mobile commerce, however, raises the stakes for this risky self-indulgence because many observers are projecting that cell phones and PDAs will soon replace wallets and pocketbooks. Consumers, who almost never leave home without their mobile devices, are being prepared for the day when all the payment and loyalty information they need will be loaded on and/or accessed by the device. So a data incursion, should it happen, could be just as damaging as losing a wallet or pocketbook. Maybe more so, if the mobile device’s ability to authenticate the consumer is hacked.

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Google Inc. has filed a patent that would allow users to pay for goods from vending machines and retailers — as well as make larger payments — via text message, or SMS (short message service) technology.

U.S. Patent 2007/0203836, called “Text message payment,” was published last Thursday by Google engineer Ramy Dodin. The invention, dubbed Gpay in the supporting drawings, is described as “a computer-implemented method of effectuating a payment, comprising: receiving at a computer server system a text message from a payor containing a payment request comprising a payment amount sent by a payor device operating independently of the computer server system; debiting a payor account for an amount corresponding to the amount of the payment request; and crediting a payee account that is independent of the computer server system.”

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