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Handepay have done a great job in organising and publicising this event!

Does it matter if banking done via a tablet or smart phone. I believe many people have both devices and bank on both dependent on what is in hand at the moment. When on the move smart phones are probably used a lot more at the moment as less people have 3/4G in their tablets as standard, but perhaps this will change in the future.

Sounds like a good move in this market

SB app doesn't support NFC at the moment you're right

I disagree that NFC means little per se. There are elements to NFC such as high value contactless and aspects of loyalty schemes where a lack of Apple NFC is a barrier to progress right now.

Some solutions need a tap for android devices but a QR (or similar) scan with a barcode reader for Apple devices... Therefore for simplicity's sake often the scan approach is opted for...

Currently I can't use my Starbucks app to pay as my iPhone screen has cracked. If the app was NFC rather than barcode based then I would not have this problem... Anyway, will be interesting to see whether it does it NFC or not...

Buy 5 Gold Sovereigns instead

Acquirers are aware of the paradigm shift and are intensely chasing PayPal or Square as clients just as much as they may want a Tesco or WalMart as a customer. The PayPal's or Square's of this world act as "master merchant" for all customers using the service - eg. taking the chargeback risk on behalf of their clients.

Companies such as PayPal and Square are liley to use the fewest number of acquirers possible in order to increase their buying power therefore acquirers must move quickly to build relationships with these organisations, however, ultimately the acquirers know the the ultimate goal of PayPal and other companies would be to bypass the existing VI/MC networks and go directly to the clients bank accounts with some other kind of username/identifier to bypass all interchange costs.

The above will take time as the networks will need to grow to be on par with VI/MC to build this kind of system hence PayPal and Square's move into physical POS space - they just need to increase awareness and overall market share before they can consider bypassing the traditional networks... Interesting times but for now the premise of the above article is certainly incorrect and the bank networks will take a long time to break down as it's not just VI/MC who have skin in the game, it's every single issuing bank worldwide who receives the interchange income and until the power of the new players gets much much greater they will not have the market power to truly change things. Thoughts?