Yesterday I participated in an interesting panel at a VCTaskforce event in Palo Alto on mobile payments.

The moderator was Eric Chan from Mobileslate, and the other panelists were Hill Ferguson from Zong, John Loschky from Billing Revolution, and Russell Tillitt from Embee Mobile. We all agreed that the mobile payment space is hot and full of opportunities.

The panel talked about how the mobile payment opportunity, originally 100% controlled by carriers, is opening up to new emerging players that are able to build a strong consumer value proposition. Carriers are now under pressure to defend margins from declining voice ARPU and from the appstores phenomenon, which is attacking two key elements of their content value chain: distribution and billing. In this area, app store players like RIM have leveraged PayPal’s payment technology to offer a payment alternative that is able to connect consumers and developers globally with compelling economics.

However, while carriers are facing the famous “dumb pipe” syndrome, the panel recognized the value of carrier billing as a payment method that is able to provide a one-click experience for customers and to target the unbanked youth segment, a key demographic for the social gaming and virtual goods market.

Beyond the traditional digital content and the emerging virtual goods opportunity, we discussed other key m-commerce use cases that are gaining traction, like product comparison shopping with ability to remotely pay and in the future proximity payments. We also discussed the successful M-pesa model in Kenya and the overall mobile payment opportunity in emerging markets, where regulations in some countries are favoring financial inclusion and are not opposed to alternative payment providers serving the unbanked. This is a white space opportunity given the limited banking and credit cards penetration.

I was able to connect with many developers during the networking session that were interested in learning how to leverage PayPal’s API’s to monetize their apps, sign up for our Code and Build sessions and attend the PayPal X Innovate 2009 developer conference, Nov 3-4 in San Francisco.

Source:X.com