Expect Rapid Adoption of the Digital Wallet: Are You Ready?

As Mike Malone has famously observed, the adoption of new technology takes longer than you think, but happens sooner than you expect.  However, neither will be the case with the mobile phone cum digital wallet.  It is coming quickly and you should expect it soon as a major market force.  Bubble Generation consumers are more than ready for it.  The question is, are you?   

Employing your cell phone as a digital wallet is not a new notion, but many of the technical and structural barriers are now coming down.  The underlying technology, Near-field communications (NFC) combines two established technologies: radio frequency identification (RFID) tags--tiny chips that operate like built-in radio transmitters, and wireless readers that pick up signals from the radio.  If you have a Fast Lane pass or a smart card, you already use the technology.  By adding the capability to your mobile phone, it can replace your wallet, credit cards, even your car keys.  For a generation tethered to the mobile phone, the transition will be quick and painless.

With at least 60 different trials completed or going on around the world, applications are being tested, protocols are being worked out, and standards are being developed.  For some time now, consumers in Europe and Asia have been using their phones to make routine purchases, buy train tickets or pay tolls.  And in Japan, the digital wallet is the only way the young, connected consumers do business.  From Govtech.net:

It's not unusual, for example, to see pedestrians sidle up to concert posters and use their mobile phones to read small bar codes. Their mobiles process the bar codes, automatically taking them to Web sites for more information. Viewing their mobiles, users can see prices, pick out seats and buy tickets. Magazine ads, publicity fliers and bus stops often have bar codes that allow mobile users to arrive at Web sites to make purchases or see information.

With the digital wallet phone, old static advertising will perish.  It will be replaced by envertising-- engaging, entertaining and enlisting customers as the opportunity to make a friend and make a sale pop up everywhere throughout the day.  Will you answer the call or will your competitors get to market with more compelling envertising than you?  Do you have a skunk works team holed up in a war room somewhere working on the digital wallet?  Are your communications being redesigned to use embedded technology? Is your customer service group on alert?  Are you building digital wallet point-of-sale capabilities?  Have you identified a Chief Envertising Officer? 

The digital wallet is a tectonic plate shift.  It will favor those companies ready to roll out new forms of marketing communications and customer involvement that employ the technology well.  The opportunity to cross-pollinate media is unprecedented.  Print, web, radio, outdoor, TV, blog, podcast all converged in a way that allows the consumer to experience your brand, get engaged, entertained and enlisted.  For marketers, instant karma--no more guessing which ads "pulled," or which promotions filled the funnel.  These are exciting times for those companies prepared to get a healthy share of the new digital spend. Scary times for laggards.