2 Great New Uses for Your Cell Phone: Mobile Commerce Shows the Way!
Naomi Campbell may have used her cell phone as a weapon however she is not our role model here. The cell phone industry has started invading the dominated credit card niche of the financial jungle. Your cell phone could well be your next credit card!
Can you imagine using your cell phone as a credit card or an electronic medium to make payments for products and services you purchase? Can you also imagine using your cell phone as a pass or entrance ticket to a venue? If you can then you are definitely up with the times of M-Commerce.
Cell phone as an entrance ticket: The cell phone industry is paving the way for the use of mobile handsets and mobile services for the above mentioned services, and many of the cell phone companies have already established mobile commerce to some extent. Mobiles are designed to receive bar codes in the form of short messaging services (SMS), these bar codes can be read quite easily with a hand-held bar code reader from the display of the cell phone. This is how the cell phone can be used as a ticket, pass or a gift coupon to purchase something from a mall or store.
Cell phone credit: Then there is the technology of using your mobile phone as a payment device. Many of you will have experienced recharging your mobile accounts by transferring an amount from one mobile to another. This is exactly the way you would be making payments in the near future. Go to a store, buy what you need and then pay through your mobile phone by typing in a code that transfers the amount to the vendors account and you are billed in your next billing cycle. So, get set to take extra care of your mobile, your bank in your pocket.