The fate of mobile payments may rest with one man: Mike Cook, the vice president and assistant treasurer of Wal-Mart Inc. Cook is the man tasked with managing all the cash, credit and coupons collected by the retailing giant. According to a story at MIT's Technology Review, that makes Cook "The Most Powerful Man in Payments."

The profile of Cook includes some staggering figures about the payment side of Wal-Mart's business. For instance, an additional second added to the process of ringing up customers in U.S. stores equates to an additional $12 million in cashier wages. Numbers like that show why any investment in mobile payments by Wal-Mart, or any major retailer, will come only after a thorough vetting of a product or technology, and why retailers remain skeptical of new payment methods.

As to retailers' apparent reluctance to get behind mobile paymnents, Cook said recent reports about retailers working on creating their own mobile payment product are largely true. He said retailers are dissatisfied with current options and the motivations of the companies behind them.

"Would you want some telco provider or some technology provider knowing all of your prescription goods that you purchased at Walgreens or Walmart?" Cook said in the article. "It's not as though we're not excited about mobile. It's that we're not excited about the solutions that are out there."

The entire article is well worth a read.

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