Mobile payment blogs gains followers
Companies around the world are wondering how they can harness the power of smartphones to gain a competitive edge at a time of quickly changing mobile technology.
From his kitchen table in Charlotte, North Carolina, Aditya Khurjekar is tracking it all.
Just to pass the time, Khurjekar about 12 months ago started blogging on the payments industry. His hobby has blossomed into his Let's Talk Payments website which has become an increasingly popular source for payments news and has made him a sought-after expert on the payments industry.
As a measure of the thirst for information on the payments world, Khurjekar's site has been selling advertisements and premium content since around the start of 2014. He's been asked to organise an event for a wireless industry trade group in Las Vegas, and is organising a smaller version of the event in Charlotte.
Let's Talk Payments competes with many similar sites at a time of an expanding mobile payments market. According to a report released in March by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 17 per cent of all mobile phone owners made a mobile payment in 2013, up from 15 per cent in 2012.
Companies like banks and retailers are eager to get involved in the mobile payments business, with smartphones becoming a way to pay for goods and services. And, more retailers are exploring offering "digital wallets" to compete with similar offerings from companies like Google.
Khurjekar said the mobile payments business is trending toward allowing paying in stores with a smartphone as easy as "one-click shopping online" is now.
"Retailers are beginning to offer smartphone-based checkout and payment options to the increasingly tech-savvy shoppers while they are in their stores," he said.
Khurjekar's website keeps tabs on all these changes.
It's an unlikely career turn for someone who started out as a microchip designer.
Khurjekar grew up in a middle-class family in Pune, India, where his father worked for Central Bank of India, first as an agriculture lender and later retiring as a general manager.
In 1994, Khurjekar moved to the US to attend graduate school at Temple University in Philadelphia. He eventually became a microchip designer for Bell Labs where he helped design the world's first decoder chip for high-definition TV.
He later worked for Verizon Wireless. His last role there was head of mobile payments. During his time at Verizon, he was on the founding team behind Isis, a mobile wallet joint venture involving AT&T and T-Mobile.
In 2013, he moved from New Jersey to Charlotte, where his wife was a vice president for Verizon Wireless.
In what he calls a "Sunday afternoon pastime," Khurjekar started blogging about his views on the payments industry. At the time, he was working for Independence Bancshares, a South Carolina bank holding company, helping with its mobile technology strategy. He's now an adviser for the bank.
Khurjekar said his blogging was noticed by Amit Goel, who convinced him to create Let's Talk Payments as an industry resource.
Goel, based in Bangalore, manages the site, while Khurjekar helps come up with ideas for content, which is produced by a team of writers.
About 90 per cent of the site's content is still free, Khurjekar said. He declined to disclose the number of paid subscribers.
