The flaw in some mobile commerce - what's your number?

It seems everyone is getting 'into' mobile transactions, mostly without thinking.

Paymate India have introduced SMS based payments:;

"Once you choose to pay via PayMate at any of the accredited merchants, all you have to share is your mobile number" [with everyone you are paying.....great idea NOT!].

It might seem funky giving your phone number to everyone you do business with but it isn't very sensible and it's certainly not a sustainable business model. Talk about potential for stalkers, especially with the mobile location services coming to market.

At least with the internet they can't call you in the middle of the night but in this case failure for Paymate could come with one touch of a keypad from one stalker too many.

If there's one thing we should be learning from the internet, it's that even if consumers aren't concious of security and privacy and maybe they don't even care, it may yet come back to bite them. Scams, social engineering and all sorts of new-fangled crime evolves when imperfect systems are used to transmit our money and our privacy into the hands of strangers. Eventually consumers will wake up when they feel the teeth in their own butt or see it happen to friends or in the media.

When they do, the first thing they'll do is change their number and their mobile transaction provider and gone is your business. Meanwhile you lot better not spoil the whole m-commerce thing for everyone.

Giving everyone you pay everywhere you go your mobile number.........I'm speech-less.

No m-commerce solution can truly provide the maximum benefits without a 'trusted third party' architecture, otherwise it's 'trust everyone', but at little sensible methodology might help.

I don't see anything promising here in Paymate's offering.