As predicted, the “mobile app” will become the next generation “Credit Card”. It is like what the CD did to LP’s ( completely change the game), the mobile app gives not only the opportunities of what we lived with plastic, but loyality, offers, alerts, location-based-marketing and a whole lot more.  Starbucks is a major early adapter of this service and their approach to drive mCommerse with this application will be a leading first of the “game-changers” of the industry.

Even though they are using their own proprietary technology to do this, it shows the power of mobile in our daily lives and convenience.   We can expect fragmentation as the alliance with the mobile operators has been late to the game.  Google is driving their own NFC initiatives along with Apple and a variety of others.  2011 will be a showdown in this area of applications as the replacement to plastic.

I am really excited about the App becoming a loyalty card and a payment mechanism. I was discussing this issue with the head of marketing from Blenz here locally in Vancouver about 6 months ago, and he mentioned that the real problem with using a phone to purchase in more creative ways beyond using it just like a regular card was to leverage the location of the individual.  He described to me that coffee shops all have to maintain there quality level and to keep the coffee fresh and hot. We discussed the possibility of using Geo-fencing technology of the user to recognise if they entered a certain location circle, the coffee could be made ready for pick-up.

This way the purchaser of coffee would only need to buy it and then pick it up.

In the picture below shows what a Geo-fence could look like…. Image buying a coffee like an Song off of iTunes  and the minute you entered the Geo-Fence they would start to make the coffee for pick-up!  You just need to show your designated ID off the phone and pick-up the coffee.

We all have the pain of carrying around our wallets with multiple loyality cards and credit cards. This launch today of Starbucks iPhone App is clearing showing the new cross-media Analog to Digital world in the form of wallet for our mobile devices.

There are many companies focusing on the future of mobile payments and the wallet, but there is no better brand experience to be able to have the ability to buy from phyical retail from an application.  I see this as the start of a new phenomenal wave of retail convergence via apps that serve as our digital loyality cards.  Apps have really become the personal engagement mechanism beyond the rich multimedia and location based services for entertainment purposes to real mobile commerce.  I am excited to see how this will go cross-platform and even evolve into web widgets.  This is really a benchmark and taste to what will become a personal wallet of experiences in the mobile device and it is exciting to see Starbucks take the first step.  I expect to see lots more of this tied to all the loyality cards we have in our wallet today…