As in other parts of the digital mobile economy, there has always been debate over whether handset-based money services would end up being dominated by MNOs or Internet players. MNOs hoped that the rise of NFC contactless payments would give them the upper hand, because NFC was initially deployed in smartphones with the SIM card – until Google spoiled that dream by supporting Host Card Emulation, which authenticates NFC payments in the cloud. However, MNOs have remained strong in developing economies, where mobile payments systems like Vodafone’s M-Pesa are often based on SMS. M-Pesa is the world’s most used mobile money service and is offered in several African countries and in India. Now that market may be under siege from…