Mobile payments designed to generate interest for tech companies

Apple, Facebook, Samsung, Google, and more tech companies want to cater to consumers interested in making mobile wireless payments - even if that means they won't end up generating large revenue directly from mobile pay.

Traditional credit cards, banks and other processing companies take a small percentage, typically up to three percent per transaction, and rely on a large volume of daily transactions. Tech companies, however, want to get mobile users to become loyal to their respective services - though Apple Pay offers a fraction of each processed sale to banks.

"I've been surprised it's taken this long," said James Wester, research director at IDC, in a statement published by TIME. "Now consumers are seeing the mobile device as part of their financial lives. We've reached the point where paying with your phone is completely normal, or normal to enough people."