Well, I personally agree with the author of this article on a few key points - Smartphones are getting cheaper, more widely used, a trend, more application for phone payment being introduced and their vulnerability to frauds.
Examples of smartphone - iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry and Android.
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By Blake Ellis, staff reporter
January 11, 2011: 10:44 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Forget what's in your wallet -- beware your smartphone. It's becoming one of your most dangerous possessions.
If your phone was stolen a few years ago, the thief could make prank calls and read your text messages. Today, that person can destroy your social life -- you said what on Facebook?! -- and wreak havoc on your finances.
Now that smartphones double as wallets and bank accounts -- allowing users to manage their finances, transfer money, make payments, deposit checks and swipe their phones as credit cards -- they are very lucrative scores for thieves. And with 30% of phone subscribers owning iPhones, BlackBerrys and Droids, there are a lot of people at risk.
"It's crazy the amount of information on that phone -- it's like carrying a mini-computer around with you, except that more people know the settings on their computer than they do on their phones at this point," said Nikki Junker, social media coordinator and victim advisor at Identity Theft Resource Center. "People are incredibly at risk as technology improves."
And mobile banking use is expected to soar by nearly 55% next year, according to recent data compiled by TowerGroup, a research firm for the financial services industry.
They found that while 17.8 million consumers used mobile banking last year, 27.4 million are expected to use it this year, and 53.1 million consumers are forecast to adopt it by 2013.
"We're now past the early adopters and starting to hit the early maturity phase," said George Peabody, director of emerging technologies at Mercator Advisory Group. "So much of our screen time is shifting from PCs to smartphones, and the banks want to be there and know they have to be there."
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In addition, the volume of mobile payments -- buying boots via Zappos iPhone app, for example, or paying bills -- is expected to climb to $214 billion by 2015, up from $16 billion in 2010, according to Aite Group, another financial services research firm.
And pay-by-phone is only going to get easier as our devices come embedded with Near Field Communication (NFC) devices that allow you to pay for your morning latte by waving your phone at the cash register.
Companies like Blaze Mobile and Bling Nation already let you pay major retailers by swiping your smartphone thanks to a sticker adhered to the outside of your phone. Meanwhile, an app created by mFoundry brings up an image of your Starbuck prepaid card barcode and lets you scan it in lieu of a credit card.
"A lot of players are now pushing to drive the contactless technology," said Gwenn Bezard, research director at Aite Group specializing in banking and payments. "While you're not going to wake up tomorrow and everyone is going to be using mobile payments, it's going to grow over the next years -- and from a very low base."
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