NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The recent phenomenon known as mobile payments has caused me to start looking at some possible casualties in that all-important process known as the business transaction.

There are several factors at play, not the least of which is speed and that thing known as "convenience," which customers always appreciate.

In assessing the future of how consumers shop and pay for their products, it has inspired me to look at the current state of not only cash and checks, but credit card companies

MasterCard

(MA) - Get Report

and

Visa

(V) - Get Report

.

What I've realized is that not only are their prospects becoming more in doubt, but it may not be out of the realm of possibility they may be killed off by tech giants

Apple

(AAPL) - Get Report

and

Google

(GOOG) - Get Report

.

But it doesn't end there. There is one other company (among others) that needs to start panicking -- payment processing giant

VeriFone

(PAY)

.

Consumers can't ever be without is their cellphones. This is a known fact. With that, vendors such as

Starbucks

(SBUX) - Get Report

and

McDonald's

(MCD) - Get Report

, which recently formed partnerships with

Square

and

eBay's

(EBAY) - Get Report

PayPal, are becoming more open to the idea of adopting mobile payments. These payments are expected to become the world's currency by 2016.

Making matters worse is the fact that

Wal-Mart Stores

(WMT) - Get Report

, the world's largest retailer, has started to look for ways to utilize Apple's iPhone to help

lower its $12 million per second

in cashier expenses at its U.S. stores.

If Walmart is pleased with its recent Apple trials and moves forward with mobile payments, it would force other retailers including

Target

(TGT) - Get Report

and

Best Buy

(BBY) - Get Report

to follow suit -- particularly Best Buy as it is now

looking for ways to increase profitability

.

This would present a pretty significant chunk of VeriFone's revenue, which it may never again see.

What this means is that VeriFone has four years before 2016 and the dominance of mobile payments to adapt or die. But its recent quarter inspired very little confidence that it can avoid extinction.

I've always thought the stock was expensive and it has done little to change that sentiment as it recently reported a miss. What's more, the company has to now work to regain the trust of investors to whom it failed to disclose damage caused by a fire in a facility in Brazil that hurt its revenue by an estimated $10 million.

While that may not be a significant amount to a company of its stature, the negative investor sentiment it caused may end up hurting VeriFone more in the long term. Nonetheless, retailers are not going to wait for it to get its house in order. Though VeriFone terminals may be ubiquitous now, the need to offer convenience and minimize long delays during checkout is proving to be a top priority among merchants.

To that end, businesses that once relied upon VeriFone are now trying to find the right mix to offer ease and expediency to consumers without the back-end headaches often associated with synergizing hardware and software. This is what makes Apple, Google and even Square so appealing, not only to startup businesses but those that are mature and well-established.

The only question is, which company will step up and define the mobile payment market?

Does VerfiFone have the ability to do it? Perhaps. But it risks cannibalizing its existing business. It is hard to not envision that one day its revenue will be sucked out completely by the fact that people will no longer carry wallets.

One day there will be nothing except an iPhone mobile wallet standing in the way between a consumer and the product he or she wants to buy. VeriFone can only hope for some sort of delay, or that it has more than four years to figure things out.

Follow @rsaintvilus

At the time of publication, the author was long AAPL and held no position in any of the other stocks mentioned

.

This article was written by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

Richard Saintvilus is a private investor with an information technology and engineering background and has been investing and trading for over 15 years. He employs conservative strategies in assessing equities and appraising value while minimizing downside risk. His decisions are based in part on management, growth prospects, return on equity and price-to-earnings as well as macroeconomic factors. He is an investor who seeks opportunities whether on the long or short side and believes in changing positions as information changes.