its payment technology is software only—it works using QR codes, but can also do near field communication (NFC). That flexibility is good for small merchants, Gardner says. “We can light up smaller retailers by the thousands. By this time next year, it’ll be very interesting.”
So the future of the “mobile wallet” is very much in flux. Gardner positions his company by saying it doesn’t have to deal with the headaches of mobile-phone hardware (handsets and chips) and security issues. He’s also getting around the data sharing issue, in that Paydiant isn’t trying to see consumer transactions and sell targeted ads (like Google, say). At the end of the day, he says, “Our platform is friendly to many of the existing players, as opposed to disruptive.” He adds that Paydiant is looking to form partnerships with companies that process transactions.
As for the future of mobile money, he says, “This is not winner-take-all. Much like the way we carry four or five credit cards. Our phone is becoming our wallet. We’re each going to have four or five apps we use to conduct financial transactions.” But the big shift, he says, is that “the economics of the payment processing industry is changing from one based on transaction fees to one based on data.”
And, just when Gardner sounds like he’s got the whole business figured out, he drops a hint that there’s “maybe a pivot” in Paydiant’s future.
This is a startup, after all.
