Though these two industry giants are working together, it is still unlikely that it will be enough.
Samsung and Visa have recently announced their mobile payments partnership that will have the PayWave app automatically installed in all of the Galaxy S4 smartphones, but most experts in the industry agree that this still won’t be enough to lead to mass adoption of the service.
This channel has seen considerable struggles in getting started, but this likely won’t be enough to make the difference.
It is particularly unlikely that this extra step toward mobile payments will lead to much of a difference overnight. The partnership brings the Visa service together with the Samsung NFC technology that would allow consumers to use their smartphones to tap a reader at a point of sale in order to quickly and easily complete a purchase transaction.
The devices with the mobile payments technology and app will become available next week.
It is unlikely that the mobile payments will begin to occur with any great impact as of that point. Experts feel that while this type of move is important so that potential users will have the technology that is required to actually use a wallet over their smartphones, those owners still don’t quite have the desire to use it as of yet.
Eden Zoller, a researcher from Ovum, said that “Ovum’s consumer survey showed that usage of mobile payments is still very low for most people and this clearly needs to be change if mobile payments are to become mainstream.” That said, she also pointed out that it is still very important to add the NFC technology equipped devices to the market so that as users become interested, they will have what is needed and be familiar with it.
Similarly, Forrester analyst Clement Teo said that adding the payWave app from Visa is only one of a large number of efforts that will be needed to plunge the world into the use of mobile payments. He pointed out that there are many players, and they will all need to align for the explosion of use to actually occur.
Teo added that “The popularity of Samsung handsets is but one factor for mobile payments, but it also depends on the type of payments.”
