There is so much going on in the mobile payments space it's getting very hard to keep up, much less figure out what to do.
Fortunately, there are several excellent, recent articles with good summaries of the mobile payments space. Several of these have coverage of Starbucks' recently released mobile payments system:
BusinessWeek's CEO Guide to Mobile Payments is a special section with several articles on the topic. It covers most of the key technologies.
MSNBC's Why buying coffee with your phone matters is another good summary and includes a description of the major competing mobile payments technologies. It also covers the recently announced Starbucks mobile payments solution.
TechNewsWorld's The Long Leap to Clear Mobile Payments Hurdles covers the Starbucks solution in detail and contrasts it with NFC-based options - including Google's plans to support NFC.
CNN's Your Mobile Phone is Becoming Your Wallet shows 5 different ways to send cash and pay merchants using a mobile phone. It also nicely summarizes the various mobile payments options and factions.
It's still unclear which technologies and companies are going to be the winners in the mobile payments space. Our advice to small businesses is to stay flexible, experiment and keep your investments low until this better sorts out.
But what is clear is the growth of smartphones and tablets - coupled with the maturation of mobile payments technology - means 2011 is becoming the year of mobile payments.
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