Mobile or Plastic?

Tech Trends Move from East to West, Inverse to Bad Pop Music.
Noting that my Belgian friend smelled like bad memories from high school, I called him out, instructing him to switch his cologne from Abercrombie to Armani.  Allegedly, the A&F brand is considered exotic and trendy above age 15 across the pond, since they do not have any European stores.

Across the other body of water, Japan is 17 years ahead of us gadget wise.  One idea that came to mind the other day was mobile QR payments... and I soon found out that this concept was already successfully executed by the Japanese and, naturally, in a handful of Starbucks stores in the Bay Area.  My initial source of inspiration was one-upping Jack Dorsey with his luscious hair and precocious Square, a small device which plugs into your phone to facilitate a commercial transaction.

The Japanese don't use credit cards.  Payments are done with mobile QR apps and Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile apps.  QR codes are 2D bar codes containing an additional level of digital data, which could be read by or generated from your mobile device to communicate information.   

NFC is short-range, high-frequency wireless communication.  The behavioral shift to relinquish plastic is a roadblock in itself, but the biggest issue is infrastructure adapting the current POS (Point of Sale in the business world) system in retail stores across America.  One day three tech buddies and I were brainstorming the best ways for mobile payments to work and weighing the various options: Bluetooth (currently effectively used in the US with EZ tags), NFC (in Japan, in vending machines and public transporation), and QR codes.  Euros have built the Mobio app enabling users to make mobile payments, as well as access online content, via QR codes, and it will be interesting to follow if the technology will catch on further west.

Mobile Payment, Without Your Phone
A guy I know is friends with the founder of Mobibucks.  I initially assumed this was some fancy mobile payment app.  It's much more simple.  You don't need an iPhone, or any smart phone for that matter.  You just need to have a phone number.  Users can go to their site and put money on an account linked to your cell phone number.  People can go to participating stores, buy something, and pay for it by typing in your phone number and a passcode for security.  Who would use such a thing instead of a credit card (is the swiping motion that difficult)?

Kids. Instead of going to the store and buying them a gift card or setting up a checking account with a debit card  (which could easily be lost in a backpack or dropped at reccess) you simply put a certain amount of money into a Mobibucks account and let them pay for things that way.  With a digital trace, you'll rest assured that your kid didn't spend their allowance on street drugs.   So simple.  Mobibucks should have a three-step graphic on their landing page describing this easy process and try their best to avoid the technical language, i.e., "using text messaging protocols... our P2P system... with the POS... in the Cloud."