Cellular Wallet ?!?!?

Like Raffi with his Banana Phone, you may soon have your very own Wallet Phone. How would you like to hit the store and when your done, pay with a phone call. As soon as next year you may see people dialing their bills or transferring funds via open air. A Chicago company, C-Sam, Inc., is trying to bring this technology here to the US. The technology is currently in place in some parts of Europe.

There are a few snags to C-Sam's plan. The obvious problem would be infrastructure. Sure making cell phones into wallets sounds easy, and it is, but what about making all cash registers and banks compliant with cell phones? In order for the system to work, all banks, credit unions, merchants, retailers, stores, companies, and so on would have to not only agree upon a standard but then support it. This can potentially be costly for all of the above. But that is all minor compared to the real problem, security.

If you thought credit card fraud was bad now, how do you feel about sending your personal information over the air. Ever get crossed up and hear someone else's phone conversation? And let's just assume for a minute that the people listening, or scanning, aren't doing it by accident. Obviously there will be safeguards built in, but you know hackers. We already have virii and spyware on cell phones. How about one that collects credit card numbers?

This will be a great technology and hopefully will be secure enough to use one day. Until then, I'll stick with my card, which I'm sure gets shared with someone already.