Back in 2001, while all of us in the US or otherwise were still talking about Y2k stories and the Tech bubble burst, somewhere in the 'less talked about world, Mobile Payments were being conceptualized. It was in this corner of the world, which is marked by high per capita incomes, that companies such as Nokia and Seamless were putting the pieces together to disrupt Money. In September 2001, Nokia launched a dual-chip solution in collaboration with payment networks & banks and called it EMPS (Electronic Mobile Payment Services). One chip was a usual SIM (subscriber identity module) card and the other was a WIM (WAP identity module) card issued by the Finnish bank Nordea for making Visa Electron payments.

Next year in 2002, Sonera, a mobile operator launched the Sonera Shopper service. In this system, the customer opens a Shopper account and transfers mon ...