as Customers approaches $300m enterprise value consider the...

as Customers approaches $300m enterprise value consider the short to medium term outlook for ATM's. In south Korea in the past month its using mobile phones for cash transactions. mobile phones are being deployed with the new sim cards that enable payments.

--------------------------------------

We follow digital convergence here at the Communities Dominate blog and digital money is another of those opportunities. Jim O'Reilly and I discussed how advanced South Korea was in this area, in one chapter out of our book Digital Korea in 2007. At that time we reported that all three mobile phone networks had enabled full mobile payments and for example five separate credit card services were enabled on the three networks and that the default setting for new credit cards in South Korea was to enable it to your mobile phone, with the traditional plastic card as the optional extra, sent to your home mailing address only if you wanted the plastic card as well.

But that was still the situation that is typical in most advanced countries of mobile money, such as Austria, Croatia and Slovenia; South Africa and the Philippines; the Scandinavian countries and Estonia; Japan; etc. The problem in those countries is that the system still had strongly entrenched parties, with the banks in one corner, the credit cards in another corner, and the mobile operators in a third corner and various other money industry players from contactless payment systems to online E-cash systems in yet another corner. So the typical consumer had tons of different devices, accounts, pin codes, etc.

That has now changed. The BBC had a story about the brand new national single identity digital money identity cards, as SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards for mobile phones, that now incorporate all the different banking systems and credit cards and mobile phone payments. There is one centralized clearing house for all payments this system handles, and the SIM card will allow users to set up their banking accounts, credit cards, make large-ticket purchases using a PIN code, and make small value purchases like paying for public transport or a can of soft drink, at the touch of the device to the payment terminal; and connect to the mobile network, all with the suitably equipped phone.

This is a very big step, as it is now "interconnectivity" between all major digital money interested parties in South Korea, and all through the obvious best digital device to do that - not a plastic credit/debit card with an intelligent chip, but of course the mobile phone, which allows far more security and utility to the user and to the system.

The South Korean solution was pushed hard by the government to convince the different parties to come together, and it is likely to turn the innovation into a great commercial success as well, as a more efficient solution for banking, credit cards, and payments (and mobile). The BBC reported that in one month the system has already spread so that over 100,000 people make transactions per day, and this is expected to rapidly spread to over half of the population, as the Korean consumers upgrade their handsets and SIM cards to this new facility. Interesting times. Lets see how that goes