Retailers and merchants of all kinds must focus on delivering a mobile commerce experience in 2010 that is truly optimized for the mobile phone, according to a Billing Revolution executive.  

Mobile Commerce Daily’s Dan Butcher interviewed Mike Dulong, cofounder and senior vice president of business development at Billing Revolution, Seattle, to discuss his forecast for the mobile commerce and payments space in 2010. Here is what Mr. Dulong had to say:

What is your outlook for the mobile payments space in 2010?
2010 will be a period of explosive growth for the mobile commerce space.

Market-leading providers of commerce solutions that embrace the credit-card- and debit-card-based business models that are powering the transactions that are executed across the Internet today will lead this space.

Startups that attempt to create new forms of payment will be left behind. Companies that invest in deepening their knowledge of the mainstream payment industry—credit cards and debit cards—will prevail.

Digital commerce is not new and thus doesn’t require a new set of payment methods. 

What challenges do you expect and what opportunities?
Mobile industry “old thinking” remains a small challenge. For the past nine years, many of the industry leaders have put the operators’ strategy ahead of their own balance sheets.

End users can now buy anything from a mobile phone using their credit or debit card. This creates limitless opportunities to engage in commerce. Buy anything you want from your phone using your credit or debit card.  

What trends do you expect to see in 2010?
Consumers will adopt mobile credit-card-based commerce much more quickly than market researchers have forecasted—this is going to move very quickly. Retailers will scramble to create secure, commerce-enabled mobile stores. Agencies will continue to play catch up.

What is your advice to marketers, advertisers, content providers and retailers?
Focus on delivering a mobile commerce experience that is truly optimized for the mobile phone.  So many mobile commerce stories are really just ecommerce with a mobile extension.

Don’t require consumers to complete a 50-step form to buy your product from a mobile phone. If a consumer buys a product from you using a mobile phone, remember their information!

Retailers—embrace the concept that it’s okay for consumers to buy your products when they are not in the store. And be ready to compete with ecommerce players in store—that is already happening.

Merchants that embrace the “mobile deal of the day” concept will see explosive growth of mobile revenues.

Advertisers—demand positive ROI from your ad agency.

Content providers—we are now in a open-access environment, so sell your products directly to consumers leveraging credit and debit cards. Leveraging these payment methods will drive four times the retention over premium SMS and an 80 percent increase in net margin.

Marketers—leverage the thread that is mobile marketing, the only channel that effectively connects all other marketing channels. This is unique to mobile and cannot be said about email marketing.

Mobile can be integrated with outdoor, Web, broadcast, radio and events. Mobile is, by far, the most personalized, direct marketing channel. Execute well and you’ll see the rewards and the positive ROI.