4) Don’t waste your time with alternatives to Apple & Google Pay.

Samsung Pay, Barclays bPay, Visa’s V.me, CurrentC and friends are not relevant for the US and Europe

Fragmentation is the name of the game (for now). Many players from banks, to carriers, to retailers, to credit card companies are all trying to crack mobile payments. After all if you’re close to the money, you’ll end up with a bigger slice. However no one is in a better position than Apple and Google to push for widespread adoption and actually be of interest to developers and retailers.

No other players are able to offer the convenience and seamless integration of payments both in-app and on the web. This is because Apple and Google control the three key parts of the ecosystem: browsers, mobile operating systems and app stores. In the case of Apple, they even own the hardware.

That’s not to say that competitors are not giving Apple and Android Pay a run for their money (*snigger*). When Google Wallet was first released in 2011, US carriers blocked the Android Wallet app to push for their own payments system: Softcard, a combined effort from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Subsequently, a consortium of retailers including Target, Best Buy and 7-eleven banded together to create a QR code based payment system called CurrentC, going as far as disabling NFC in their shop payment systems to stymie Apple Pay as it started to get traction. Back home in the UK, Barclays is trying to literally shackle their customers to bPay, their wearable payment bracelet.

A wearable handcuff just to make payments? Uh… no thanks, Barclays.

Not a week goes by where there isn’t some sort hackathon sponsored by a credit card company trying to woo talented developers to build cool stuff using their APIs in exchange for pizza.

Nonetheless, we predict that Android and Apple Pay will capture the lion’s share of mobile payments. They simply offer the most complete solution. Although that’s not to say multiple mobile payment systems won’t co-exist. Paypal isn’t going away. Also, big retailers like Walmart can incentivise their customers to sign up to their own app and payment portal with reward points. Thus cutting out the middle man and help them save serious $$$ in card processing fees.

Looking further abroad, Japan is arguably the country with the most mature mobile wallet infrastructure. People have been using their phones for contactless payment since 2004 and there’s a plethora of mobile wallets on offer. By that logic, Samsung Pay might well get some of the local market share.