Cell phone subscribers are spending their money in mobile commerce fashion these days in what may be one of the most interesting trends of the last 50 years. Want to pay for parking? Pull out the cell phone, dial the phone number on the meter for the owner of that space, and just select how much time you want to buy and how you want to pay. That’s it. Debit account or credit card, it does not matter to the merchant / owner of the parking space, they just got paid and you did not have to swipe your card or give out any personal financial information in the process. Isn’t that cool?From concert tickets to putting money on the parking meter, to buying a new DVD or some cool looking clothes, the global trend of using your cell phone to pay for stuff is ringing up sales at an escalating rate. Wireless communication devices have forever changed how business is done and the pace of change is accelerating.Cashless society getting closerThe evolution of mobile commerce or m-commerce as it is know in some circles, is the ability of customers to buy something by using their cell phone. The latest generation of these electronic magic boxes, come jammed packed with all kinds of good stuff that we just take for granted now like digital photography, an address / phone list of friends, text messaging that is a topic all unto itself and the ability to connect to the internet.It’s the latter feature, the one that let’s us send and receive emails and browse the web to watch movie trailers or just check out the news, that has created a paradigm shift in the way we live. What with the pace of life today, everyone has to go, go, go all the time, we want and now expect to have the convenience to do the things we want to do right now. Welcome to the land of mobile commerce.Now just extend that transaction process to a time when you want to buy a new DVD, tickets to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean or Spiderman movie, or how about some new clothes. Each transaction can be completed by cell phone today. Functionality is limited to the geographic region in which we live. In Japan, a country that lives for the latest and the greatest new technology, Sony has been offering mobile commerce service for years. Cell phone customers and merchants alike just love it. Sony is so taken with the success that they plan to extend their product offerings in the emerging Chinese markets soon.Mobile commerce marketing strategiesWant to boost your brand name and increase customer loyalty? A rhetorical question that could stand the test of time, yes of course! Mobile commerce is the ticket to boosting the bottom line. The paradigm shift into mobile commerce is here to stay.To get in sync with this new way of doing business you need to adjust your web site to match the lifestyle of cell phone customers.In the USA and Canada, a growing number of merchants are using their web sites to offer commerce specials to induce customers. North Americans have a long way to go to catch up with the Japanese and many European countries that have been early adapters of the convenience of mobile commerce.This is a dramatic shift in how business can be done. A cell phone owner now has control over their personal financial information because they do not have to share any details during a cell phone initiated transaction. No sharing of the PIN number or details about debit accounts or credit cards. Both the merchants and the customers have a much lower exposure to fraud in a mobile commerce environment and in the long run this means costs savings on lots of the things we like to buy. How’s that for a start to summer?Terry Burton is an independent analyst who follows emerging trends in technology and financial services markets.
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