Bill Ray really got this right!
The problem of 'who owns the customer' will be a significant hurdle for the mobile payments arena. The "owner" of the relationship with the customer traditional gets to make a profit on the customer's purchase, which is why everyone is motivated to do that.
Apple as the hardware manufacturer and OS provider thinks they own the customer (they want to charge digital publishers 30% commissions on iPhone sales), Google thinks its SaaS apps will enable a better customer experience (they only charge 10% for digital media sales), credit & debit card issuers want to own the customer (they get paid every time their card is used through interchange fees), and the mobile network operators (MNO's in the GSMA) want to get paid because they will support the lockdown-security function call TSM that will make a mobile phone secure enough to actually be a payment device. Don't forget the retailer - they think they own the customer because the customer is standing in their store; not a bad argument.
Bottom line, if all of these parties want to earn some of the margin on every mobile payments transaction in the future, then mobile payments could fail or falter. Mobile payments *must* be a less expensive alternative to traditional plastic for it to gain mass adoption.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
