IBM, Dream Payments Get Together to Advance Mobile Payments Development

October 18, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

If you were thinking that the market was starting to get a little tight for mobile payments tools, well, it’s about to get tighter. A lot tighter, in fact: IBM just got together with Dream Payments to create a new line of tools that will make it easier for banks and other financial institutions to bring out new mobile payments options.

Banks and the like have been slow to bring out new mobile payments tools, and that slowness has potentially cost them a lot of market share. That slowness isn’t merely incompetence, though, it’s also had a lot to do with the regulatory environment which has tied their hands. However, with the new IBM / Dream Payments team-up, it might make it a lot easier for organizations to get in.

The end result of this partnership, Dream Payments Cloud, serves as a scalable tool that allows for both mobile and digital payment systems. Using IBM Cloud as a backbone, the new mobile payments system can be quickly brought out with appropriate branding.

This isn’t just mobile, either; mobile wallets are in play here, of course, but so too can CHIP card developments or contactless systems get suited up and made ready to play. That’s going to allow a lot of groups who were formerly behind the eight ball of the times to enter the field as perfectly viable competitors.

What’s more, security won’t get short shrift here as it sometimes does; IBM Managed Security Services will also be in play to help prevent against attacks and breaches that would ordinarily torpedo such developments.

The idea is a sound enough one, but it’s easy to see the downside. Already, the field is pretty well stuffed with competitors, and every new offering only serves to stuff the field all the more. People are already tuning out some apps because they can only keep track of so many; it’s different when it’s a store releasing an app, but a bank stepping in alongside an operating system or a device maker could be a tall order.

Banks have some edge here thanks to name recognition and an established customer base, but it’s entirely possible they will miss out on that market share altogether thanks to established positions and sheer inertia.