Mobile payment refers to the paying for a product or service using mobile technology such as a short message service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and NFC. It includes transactions that use banking instruments such as cash, bank accounts or debit and credit cards, as well as noncarrier stored value accounts, such as travel cards, gift cards or Paypal.

However, mobile payment does not include transactions that use mobile operators' billing systems, such as purchase of mobile content or telebanking by mobile to the service center via an interactive voice response (IVR) system.