Last week I went to a fantastic conference on mobile run by the University of Oxford.
Co-hosts for the day were Ajit Jaokar and Tomi Ahonen.
There were tonnes of great speakers including Peter Paul Koch who runs Quirks Mode – talking about the importance of having good relations with webdevelopers.
Not only did we hear about all sorts of fantastic mobile apps, smart cities of the near future and how we might use white-space spectrum to enable smart devices but one of the recurring themes was how your mobile phone will soon replace your wallet.
Mobile money is not just convenient for you it is potentially very exciting for banks, marketers and all sorts of other entrepreneurial people. Currently there is a mad dash to see who will own this space with Google Wallet being one of the prime contenders.
Connecting your identity with your wallet and knowing your location will allow companies to accurately target you with personalised offers that really will consign Groupon to the spam bin. Dave Birch went even further to say that beyond Mobile Money identity is the next commodity.
Highlight of the day and was Tomi enthusing about his favourite subject. Here is the video sorry there is only 9 1/2 minutes but that was all i could take in one go on my phone.
atrophiedmind 
Just great to see this Neil and I am sad I missed the day – I have witnessed the Japanese system – so tempting as you can use it in small shops as well as taxi’s and on the trains! In Kenya we have used M-Pesa because it is more secure but the only problem with all these things is that you have to have the right connections and phone! I am off to do my next grocery order via my mobile app from my hotel room in Denmark, so the delivery van will be there at 10pm when I get home – the wonders of mobile technology! I can magnify the text and even have it read back to me if I am lucky!
Yes I think that aside from the obvious benefits to marketeers the poorer parts of the world will benefit most from mobile money and be the true early adopters. Monty Munford was talking about his experiences in Somaliland and how they may well be one fo the first places to abandon traditional money.