Apple Pay will heat up European mobile payments battle, mobile operators must respond to stay relevant

With Apple Pay and other mobile wallets gaining momentum, it seems that mobile operators face increasing challenges in staying relevant in terms of our mobile money. After all, would you rather use a payments service from Apple or Vodafone?

A new report from IHS Technology highlights the very fact that Apple Pay and others are expanding internationally (even this week news broke that Apple Pay will launch in Canada later this year), but what can operators do, and are they even in the game?

Apple Pay and mobile wallets to conquer Europe?

The IHS report “Mobile operators must refine their mobile payments services in Western Europe” was written by analyst Siyun Zeng, and looks at the state of mobile payments so far in Western Europe, what mobile operators have done to date, and what they need to do to stay relevant.

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Here are some of the key points and analysis from the very timely report:

Operators must move fast now before Apple and Google extend their dominance in the mobile payments space in Europe. Consolidation continues in the US as major players including Samsung, Google and PayPal announced payment services to rival Apple Pay.

Europe will be the next combat zone — Visa is rolling out tokenization in Europe in April, which paves the way for Apple Pay. The UK market appears to be high on the list of target markets that Apple wants to expand into, but the banks are still concerned about security issues.

Mobile operators in Western Europe have launched 36 mobile wallet services across 15 countries as of January 2015. Most of these services are less than three years old and still in their nascent