Emerging Technologies for User-Friendly Mobile Payment Applications

1. Introduction

The essence of mobile technology revolves around the idea of reaching customers, suppliers, and employees regardless of where they are located. Mobile technologies are about delivering the right information to the right place at the right time. It gives users the ability to access the Internet from any location at any time, the capability to pinpoint an individual mobile terminal user’s location, the functionality to access information at the point of need, and a need-based data/information update capability. A mobile technology is not just evolution of communication technologies but combines the advantages of mobile communications with existing electronic communications services. There are some specific attributes of mobile technology, such as mobility, reachability etc. Mobile technology is a broad category that includes all devices, protocols and infrastructures that allow one to communicate, interact and exchange data with an individual or system anywhere and anytime. Examples include mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). For mobile technology, the major characteristics are mobility and reachability. Mobility implies that users can carry cell phones or other mobile devices to transact from anywhere in mobile network area. Reachability of the wireless devices makes it possible for people to be contacted anytime and anywhere and provides users with the choice to limit their reachability to particular persons or times. Mobile commerce has features not available to traditional e-commerce. In addition to reachability and mobility others feature are described as follows.