As a credit card carrying adult with internet at home work and on mobile, I can order e-tickets online or over the phone for cinema, airline, parking and present my credit card for redemption and with total trust. It costs me nothing (generally, and in some cases I get % back), it’s much the same experience irrelevant of vendor, it’s universal across national boundaries and most importantly it’s easy. To move from that space I would need a compelling reason, and I don’t see m-ticketing giving that.

However with pre-adult I think there might be a market. That possibly also could be sustainable past credit-card-carrying-age if it can be made natural and easy for that group. At present I don’t think we are there, there are too many methodologies (NFC, RFID, Bluetooth, SMS, MMS barcode vouchers) which makes the experience unnatural, device sensitive, and transaction costs with SMS/MMS are too high.

Solve those issues it might stand a chance of mass adoption.

1. Mobile payments mechanism. Paying through your mobile has always been an issue. There isn’t a one click solution at the moment and solution like Bango require user’s to enter their credit card details over the phone which not many of us feel at ease with. PayForIT or Premium SMS charges are very high for the retailer to make any profit from and different networks have different charge ranging from 30-50%.

2. New technologies such as NFC or RFID are not common at the moment and in a few places they are, its the same situation with PayForIT where the charges are applied to the user’s bill and the network taking away a huge chunk of the the profit.

3. Even if the networks reduce the amount they charge the seller when using PayForIT or premium SMS, it is still limited to a maximum purchase of £10 which may be alrite for micro payments but not tickets.

4. Lack of industry standards amongst network operators is another huge issue that makes it extremely difficult for developers. For e.g. Sprint in the US requires a different method using GCD’s for the delivery of any media over the phone and Orange likes to include their own ad headers that mess up with the content unless taken care of.

5. Redemption method is another huge issue. How would the voucher be redeemed at the venue that would not require the venue to install or purchase a new equipment and certainly would not make the queues worst. Imagine the operator trying to read some code and punch it into the system during a football match with long queues forming up.

6. Once above all is streamlined we have users to think of.. How can we make it easy and user friendly for users and get them to embrace this new culture of payments.

I am sure i have missed a few points. Please feel free to comment or add to this.

Regards

Bar code applications were tried by us but due to problems with MMS in the Indian networks/ phones, it did not suceed. RFID is yet to get in and you have rightly said that it’s expensive and not a default configuration in phones.. but even it gets in, will people have the balance to pay. Another big question is if the payment is debited from a balance maintained with the Telecom operator ( post or pre-paid) – what is the payment collection fee, considering their margins/ govt taxes going to be ?

1. I do not see Brians issues as the REAL obstacles…
2. Instead, it mightbe that consumers are JUST NOT USED and DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE to do online mobile internet transactions.
3. Let us be precise: This is about the “ordering” part, where online time is frequently dear, touchscreen or small buttonskeyboard are a hassle and often you need to register cumbersomely before you can actually PLACE your order.
4. No problem to do this at your PC. The actual DELIVERY of the ticket to the handset is widely accepted and may, in a 2nd step, accustom the consumer and lead to acceptance of the mobile ordering part.
5. Now that e.g. airlines use the 2D scanners, the equipment starts to become available at feasible price levels…

These were, btw, key thesis for a study I carried out for T-Mobile as early as 2002… and I believe, things have not changed so far!

1. Different mobile networks are not compatible with each other, so a different solution is needed to support each mobile network.

2. Very high mobile network charges. With current SMS payment gateways, network providers commonly charge a whopping 30% – 50% fee.

3. Per-day limits imposed by mobile networks. Right now, many mobile networks in different countries impose a $5 USD limit (or some other similar amount) per day, so if someone purchased a ticket costing $50 USD, it would take at least 10 days or more for all the micropayments to clear. This would be very frustrating for most people. In US cities, a simple movie ticket costs $9 USD or more, so the $5 per day limit will prevent the user from being able to use the ticket for 2 days while the payments go through.

4. Americans are not culturally used to paying for services on their mobile phone. This cultural change has happened more in other countries, so it might be more successful in Europe or Asia, but it is a big hurdle in the US.

If these were overcome, then I would give more thought to this type of ticketing system.