Alex Rampell does a great job describing regulatory and market pressures that are pushing down mobile payments charged by the usual suspects such as PayPal.
Since the start of 2011, the government had introduced many measures to cool down the runaway real estate market, such as pushing up minimum down-payments, limiting the number of homes a family could purchase in some cities and introducing property taxes in Shanghai and Chongqing.
As part of his war with the drug industry, Senator Chuck Grassley (R--Iowa) has been pushing companies to disclose more about their payments to foundations.
Already major payments providers like Visa are pushing Near Field Communications (NFC) payment solutions hard - a raft of contactless payment systems is beginning to hit the market.
Visa is using payment information to identify shoppers in a particular mall by their payments on the card and them pushing them a coupon worth 20 percent off at the Gap store in that mall.
Now Britain is pushing an alternative scheme whereby national tax authorities would exchange information about payments to non-residents, instead of taxing them.