David Lindberg is the ex head of marketing and strategy at Commonwealth Bank. He is the man responsible for bringing Kaching to CBA customers and it’s not surprising after listening to his vision of money in the future.
Lindberg said that just 3 years ago, less than 1% of all bank transactions went through a mobile phone. This month will likely be the first month in Australian history that more financial transactions are done via a mobile phone than the web!
He went on to forecast the death of money as we know it. He explained that the enabling technology is mobile paired with NFC. There are 4 companies in the world that have the potential to own every transaction on earth. Visa, MasterCard, Google and Paypal are investing billions of dollars to dominate this market.
Contactless payments are about to take the world by storm. Lindberg predicts that every checkout counter at Coles and Woolworths will support mobile payments by the end of this year. If this turns out to be a reality, this will indeed be a much faster rollout than we expected. For this to be achieved iPhone5 better come with that magic NFC chip inside.
There are plenty of issues that arise as a result of consumers moving to a cashless society. One of which is the future role retail stores will play. Lindberg says they will become mere showrooms for customers to browse, while the purchase is actually made via the phone.
While the TED talk is restricted to 18 minutes, this is one I felt could have easily gone twice as long and still had the audience at the edge of their seats. It’s a fascinating look into the future, one that may not be as far away as we first thought.
