When people think mobile payments, they think about the act of paying for goods by waving a smartphone at the cash register. But I'm more interested in the implications that come from the capability. You're seeing it now with the introduction of Google Wallet, which wants to use payment history to better serve discounts and advertisements. It's what comes next that is so exciting.

But as we're seeing with Google Wallet, as well as other attempts to bring mobile payments to the market, adoption is pretty tough. Using Google's service, for instance, requires you to be a Sprint customer using the Nexus S. (The Galaxy Nexus for Verizon Wireless still can't support it.) It also requires the retailer to support a technology called near-field communication, or NFC, which many don't.