The extensive promotion of mobile payments at this summer’s Olympics was seemingly the first sign of major changes to come.
Surveys have long predicted the growing popularity of cashless payments. And now, the Canadian Government has actually expanded the Code of Conduct for the Credit and Debit Card Industry to help businesses deal with the increasing use of mobile payments.
For customers, using smartphones to show coupons and make purchases is faster, easier and—data security concerns aside—safer than using hordes of cash or carrying around a stack of credit cards.
Read: Canadians adopting mobile banking
“This expansion will help make the code even more relevant and useful to small business owners,” says CFIB national affairs vice president Corinne Pohlmann.
Read: CFIB calls for enhanced credit/debit code
She adds, “The government has shown it’s prepared to update the code as the credit card industry evolves.”
Additonally, companies offering mobile wallets are quickly becoming some of the hottest new businesses on the market; San Francisco-based mobile payment company Square was recently valued at more than $3 billion, for instance, reports Financial Times.
Read: Get ready for virtual wallets
It was founded by Jack Dorsey, also the co-founder of Twitter. To date, he’s raised $200 million in new funding to help expand the company internationally.
There’s fierce competition worldwide, though, since a large number of tech-savvy entrepreneurs are busily searching for ways to become the default wallet and turn consumers’ phones into all-purpose payment systems, says FT.