Mobile payment is an inherently “sexy” technology that is long on interest, but short on adoption.

It makes sense that interest is high. Smartphone market share is skyrocketing, and consumers demonstrate a growing trust in electronic transactions.

Despite that, small business owners are smart to tread lightly when it comes to early adoption.

TOO MANY ‘WALLETS’

Potentially the biggest hurdle to widespread adoption is the multitude of platforms. PayPal, Google and Square are just a few of the digital wallet entrants, and all come with different rules and limitations.

Google Wallet isn’t currently available on the iPhone, for example, and while Square Wallet might work at Starbucks, it will get you nowhere at Target.

In many ways, this market fragmentation is like someone carrying cards from Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express and then having to track which merchants accept which cards.

The one advantage that credit cards have over the various digital wallet platforms is a single point-of-sale device, a card reader, that transmits transaction data to a clearinghouse, which then verifies available funds across each payment platform. If you’ve seen one credit card machine, you’ve seen them all.

Some merchants may not accept American Express or Discover, but that’s generally a merchant level-decision related to fees and not the ability to physically process the transaction through the reader.

WAIT, BUT EXPERIMENT

So what is a progressive small business to do? Wait until the technology matures before you make a major commitment.

Don’t completely ignore mobile payment platforms. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to explore your options. You could even go so far as to make a platform or two available to your customers. No doubt, some of them would welcome an opportunity to push the edge of what’s possible with their devices, but today it’s little more than a marketing piece.

Talk to your banker or merchant services provider to understand what’s available to you and what they’re seeing in terms of adoption. Have fun in the “mobile playground” and get familiar with the technology because no doubt it’s coming.

For now, though, widespread adoption is still firmly planted somewhere in the horizon.