Friday, April 8, 2011

Alternative Payment Systems Innovations Conference, San Francisco, 3/29-3/30

I attended and moderated a panel at this conference on Alternative Payments. The emphasis of the conference was Mobile, dah! Isn’t every conference these days? This was the 2nd annual version of this event and I would rate it a 7:10. It attracted a very high quality group of speakers (present company excluded!). It was missing a critical mass of attendees and especially prospective buyers in the form of merchants. That is a common problem with most payments conferences, other than the Direct Response Forum and Merchant Risk Council which are both primarily merchant grass roots driven.

The most profound thing that came out of this conference was a quote from a former colleague and now esteemed consultant, Richard Crone. Richard stated; “the one who enrolls, is the one who controls” and further that “the carriers have the consumer’s payment info and access to leverage their device for security” and "are therefore in the best position to win in mobile payments". I could not agree more with Richard and that is the why I came to BilltoMobile. We are an extension of the carrier’s platform and leverage that existing enrollment and the ability to validate not only the phone but a 2nd factor of authentication, the billing zip code as well.