“I honestly don’t think that mobile payments will ever substitute cards or cash,” admits Paolo Rizzardini, VP mobile payments at Infobip.

It’s a pretty interesting statement coming from a VP of mobile payments. Yet it’s a pragmatic view, accepting that the convenience of mobile solutions won’t kill off the traditional channels.

Rizzardini adds: “The user needs to have the option…and select the one that better feeds his habits, but it’s not up to us to decide what the user will select. I think that our responsibility is to provide a secure and frictionless payment option to the end user.”

Infobip started life in 2002, yet has only moved into the mobile payments sphere in the last few years. The company’s main solution, Centili, is aimed at micropayments and is charged directly to customers’ mobile bills.

Evidently the Croatia-based firm is more aligned with mobile operators rather than the banks, with Rizzardini saying it’s in the company’s “DNA”. Yet he admits it’s a balancing act trying to keep everyone happy.

“We focus on the mobile operator because it’s in our DNA, and also the banking system,” he explains. “On one side we expose their billing capabilities, but they don’t have the technology to do that [so] we bring them our technology to implement these kind of payment flows.

He continues: “On the other hand we work directly with the global market to bring merchants to the specific market where the operator is working, so the end user has the actual services to purchase through the mobile payments.

“It’s a key element of the ecosystem,” he adds.

This familial relationship between the banks and the operators can shoot off in interesting ways. Take Paym, the new payment system recently announced by the banking industry and being offered by a litany of UK banks.

Rizzardini explains how Russia is an anomaly – where banks and operators are working together in harmony. “All the money is moved to the banks, so every operator is working with a bank and the bank is providing the actual money transfer to companies like us working on the market,” he says.

This isn’t the only issue facing mobile payments solution providers today. There isn’t much room to manoeuvre within the space; there are lots of standards and lots of players.

A panel session at Apps World Europe back in October addressed this question, with the consensus being that, while lots of competition will remain, the long-term future will gradually become more converged.

Rizzardini describes the issue as “one of the biggest challenges we have.”

“A lot of our work is to educate all the players in the ecosystem, to try and find a common language that has the goal to educate them but also to educate the end user, because in the end it’s the end user that needs to use the solution for doing a purchase,” he argues.

“I see this fragmentation as an opportunity more than a challenge, but for sure there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on this side.”

As for the lack of elbow room, Rizzardini adds: “It’s true there’s a lot of companies that are starting the business, but then it’s five, six companies that are playing on the big market.

“It’s not just a matter of technology – it’s a matter of ability, it’s a matter of cashflow. There are a lot of aspects that are very important.”

Find out more about Centili here. As the UK rolls out a new £1 coin for 2017, do you think the death of cash is exaggerated?