I’m in Europe this week teaching, along with my partner Carol Coye Benson, a private payments workshop. This is the first time we’ve done this in Europe – and we’re looking forward to it!

Flying over on United Airlines, I couldn’t help but notice the new optical bar code scanners that have been installed at the TSA screening checkpoints at SFO and at the United gates. My printed out boarding pass had a 2D bar code on it – but that wasn’t read in either case. Those devices are apparently primarily intended for use with mobile boarding passes – 2D bar code images displayed from your mobile phone.

I used one of these new mobile boarding passes for the first time on a recent flight on American Airlines. When I checked in online for the flight home, I noticed a mobile boarding pass option – selected it, received an email with an attached image file that I then displayed to a reader at the boarding gate.Why am I mentioning all of this – and what’s it got to do with payments? (I’m actually just trying to stay awake on my first afternoon in Europe – just kidding!)

It’s always fascinated me how the serious adoption of new technology in a seemingly unrelated vertical soon enough bleeds over into another vertical – particularly as equipment is involved. As deployments occur, new things are learned, enhancements and refinements are made and things just generally improve. That ball is now seriously rolling with respect to mobile boarding passes.

Clearly, we’re on the cusp of a serious migration to mobile boarding passes in the US. Travelers will soon be very comfortable displaying their boarding pass to a scanner at the gate – and avoiding the hassles of printing and carrying paper. When will this new way of communicating data simply from the mobile handset jump the rails into new verticals? Are you betting, along with Starbucks and mFoundry – and others, that it’s coming? Seems that the airlines have placed they’re bets!