What the mobile payment craze is really about: Coupons!  by
Marguerite Reardon September 4, 2012  Your smartphone is going
to get more adept at handling money, but maybe not in quite the
way you've been imagining it would.  There's been a lot of talk
lately about mobile payments and how new apps or NFC technology
will let you pay for things with your smartphone. But the truth
is that this market is less about finding a new way for you to
pay for things and more about offering you an easier way to
carry and redeem coupons and special offers.  What's the most
successful mobile payment system to date? It's an application
that can be downloaded onto your phone to pay for coffee. Yes,
the Starbucks app, launched in January 2011, has processed 55
million transactions, the company has said, adding that it
processes more than a million mobile phone transactions per
week. The app, which is quite simple, uses a bar-code-like
technology to scan your phone. But that's as far as it goes --
it's a payment app used by only