How well mobile money is doing in Europe and the United States? If you take into consideration how popular this type of money management in Africa and other developing countries you would think it’s more than okay. But it’s not that great, really.

Paypal’s mobile payments reached $4 billion in 2011 which is a nice growth from $750 million just a year before. The company attributes this success to overall increase in mobile commerce. Consumers and Convergence study by KPMG showed that 33% of US consumers have used mobile banking which is also increased compared to 9% in 2008.

This information might seem like a good indication that in a year or two everybody will be using mobile phones to pay for stuff. Last year was promised to become a breakthrough for m-payments but it didn’t happen. It’s starting off very slowly and there are a number of obstacles before people completely embrace it. First of all, it is security. People in the Western World are more sensitive about it as they have been using computers to buy stuff for two decades now. They know there is always somebody ready to steal their bank details. In fact, many people among that 33% that used mobile banking expressed their concerns about security capabilities of m-payments.

The real reason why mobile money is not spreading in America and Europe as fast as in the Third World is absence of common standard. Now there are dozens of companies who want to cash in on the new trend. These companies include manufactures of mobile devices as NFC can’t work on basic devices and requires NFC-enabled mobile phones. In Africa, for example, the most basic technologies are used. They are supported by all mobile operators and the whole infrastructure doesn’t need to cooperate with different manufacturers to make things work.

Here is the list of mobile devices that are currently supporting NFC. There are approximately thirty models and the fact that they are among the most expensive mobile devices doesn’t help. It will take another two or three years before NFC will be supported by all mobile phones by default. And that’s very positive assessment if you remember competition between different mobile operating systems. Some go away, some emerge. How all this is supposed to work? Don’t forget about merchants who need to buy and install special terminals. This has to be ubiquitous phenomena.

Just use Global USSD. And stay tuned.