ITWire

According to analyst Gartner the value of mobile payments this year will surge almost 62 per cent to $US171.5 billion, with Asia Pacific the biggest international market. St George has already indicated it believes mobile banking will eclipse other online banking transactions within 18 months

Dr Brad Pragnell, head of industry policy for APCA, speaking at Informa’s BankTech conference in Sydney today, said that ACMA, ASIC and the RBA could all be considered to have some jurisdiction in the mobile payments arena which would ultimately need some form of regulatory oversight.

He cautioned however against moving too swiftly to regulate the mobile payments market in case it squashed innovation.

“We have seen the regulators move too quickly in other emerging areas and stamped out the ability to let it flower,” he said. Whatever approach was ultimately adopted it needed to be properly co-ordinated according to Dr Pragnell.

Under the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act the RBA may impose an access regime on a designated payment system where it considers it appropriate. In the case of the automatic teller machine network the RBA did not step up to regulate the sector until 2009, 32 years after the first ATM machine was installed in Australia.

However it seems unlikely that mobile payments will be left similarly unregulated for three decades.

Simon Millett, director of banking CSC Australia, agreed with Dr Pragnell that regulation of mobile payments remained a tough question, as it was still a relatively small part of the overall payments market. At present he said that the majority of mobile use in banking was for account management rather than for payments.