Mobile Payments: Navigating A New World - Part 1 Of 4

It's a familiar experience for many of us – standing in front of a cashier and fumbling through an assortment of credit, debit and loyalty cards to find the right combination for that particular store and purchase (or to discover that you have forgotten your points card, again). Wouldn't it be great if all of these things were available in a convenient place?

The use of "mobile payment" technology for point of sale purchases and an array of other consumer-friendly functions is picking up steam in North America. There are a number of early entrants already in use in Canada, and they all function differently. For example, while Starbucks' app uses 2D scanning technology  to transact payments and link to the customer's cache of points, BMO's mobile payment solution uses a near-field-communications (NFC) enabled sticker on the back of the customer's smartphone. CIBC and Rogers recently announced a mobile payments program that will utilize NFC technology that is embedded