Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

NFC-enabled mobile phones will be used to replace everything from credit cards and loyalty cards to bus and train tickets, library cards, door keys, and even cash. - Banks and Mobile Operators to Go Head to Head for Mobile Payments Business, Mike Clark, January 14, 2010

MasterCard to Test NFC Add-on for Mobile Payments in Singapore

May 5, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - MasterCard is to run a pilot test in Singapore of a new SIM+antenna NFC solution developed by Gemalto.

The Upteq N-Flex device is the first NFC add-on to conform to the Single Wire Protocol (SWP) and is designed to add near field communication functionality to a wide range of existing mobile phones.

For the trial, MasterCard is collaborating with DBS Bank, mobile network operator StarHub and EZ-Link, operator of a contactless stored value card with over 20,000 acceptance points in Singapore including public transport services and retail outlets. Participants in the trial will be existing holders of DBS and EZ-Link Fevo MasterCards.

"This innovation is aimed at accelerating mobile NFC payments in the region," explains MasterCard's Ajay Bhalla. "MasterCard's collaboration with Gemalto marks an important milestone for the contactless payments industry, with mobile services expanding beyond simple payments and fueling economic connections for consumers in the global marketplace."

Participants will be able to use their phones to make payments at merchants equipped to accept MasterCard PayPass contactless cards and, later, possibly pay use them for transport ticketing too:

"We are also exploring the possibility of using the Upteq N-Flex solution for our contactless e-purse application (CEPAS) to enable mobile NFC payments for small ticket retail and mass transit including buses and trains," says EZ-Link's Nicholas Lee.

In February 2009, Singapore became the first country to give the go ahead for the creation of a central Trusted Third Party (TTP) designed to deliver a fully inter-operable, multi-application national NFC ecosystem. Government funding is being used to encourage merchants to switch to contactless card accepting terminals and a number of NFC trials have taken place in the country over the last couple of years.

Visa to Launch Contactless Mobile Payments for iPhone

May 6, 2010

ReadWriteWeb - Want to pay for purchases by waving your iPhone in front of a payment terminal at checkout? That will soon be a reality thanks to a new partnership between Visa Inc. and DeviceFidelity, which has teamed up to launch a mobile payment technology for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS devices.

The news comes by way of a leaked press release that temporarily appeared on MarketWatch, but has since been taken down. Several versions remain on the Web, however, thanks to Google's cache.

payWave for iPhone

According to the release, the new Apple-certifed technology combines a protective iPhone case with a secure memory card that will host Visa's contactless payment application, Visa payWave.

PayWave, introduced in September 2007, allows cardholders to wave their card in front of terminals in order to pay for purchases at point-of-sale. The technology is similar to MasterCard's PayPass solution, which rolled out to select markets in 2005.

Visa's contactless technology already works at over 32,000 retailers from top brands, notes the company's corporate website, and the list is "rapidly growing," it says.

The iPhone-enabled payWave technology, too, will be made available at thousands of merchants, claims the release, including fast food restaurants, retail stores, in taxis, during sporting events (such as baseball games) and even at vending machines that have contactless payment terminals.

Beyond iPhone: Works on Any Phone with a Memory Card Slot

What's even better about this news is that the mobile payment technology won't be limited to iPhones. It will also work with "a majority of smart phones that have a slot for a memory card," which means that owners of other popular smartphones won't necessarily be out of luck. To use Visa's technology on non-iPhones, users can insert the card into their phone's memory slot to transform their phones into mobile payment devices.

Visa already released a similar technology in Malaysia and Japan. Last year, for example, the company teamed up with Nokia and Maybank, a leading financial institution in Malaysia, to offer Visa payWave on mobile devices. But at the time, the company claimed that several barriers to U.S. adoption still remained, many of which had to due with the limited adoption of NFC-enabled devices and terminals here in the U.S. (NFC, or near field communications, is a wireless communication technology that enables data exchanges between devices. The technology is popular overseas in Europe and Asia, but has yet to catch on with any real gusto in North America. PayWave uses NFC for mobile transactions.)

Apparently, Visa has found a workaround for the lack of NFC phones by embedding the computer chip needed into specially designed iPhone cases instead.

Is it Secure?

Considering that people often lose their mobile phones, the application has been designed so that it can be password-protected and uses "advanced security technology," says the release, to uniquely identify each transaction. If a phone was lost or stolen, the phone's owner would simply call their provider who could then immediately deactivate the account, the same as with lost or stolen credit cards.

The leaked release was accompanied by videos demonstrating the new technology, but sadly those are now unavailable.

Video Footage of Visa’s NFC iPhone Device Now Available

May 6, 2010 (14:17)

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - The video footage described in the press release NFC World spotted on Tuesday, announcing that Visa is to test an NFC-enabled protective case for the iPhone, is now live on the PR Newswire website.

The footage shows that the NFC add-on, developed by DeviceFidelity, is more than just a stand-alone iPhone protective case. In fact, it appears to connect to the iPhone via the Apple 30-pin dock connector on the bottom of the phone.

We'll have more details as soon as possible. In the meantime, readers can view the videos on PR Newswire's website.

UPDATE AT 16:12: Oh dear! Now the video has also been taken down.

Here's what we gleaned from watching the footage: The video shows a two-part casing for the iPhone, into which a DeviceFidelity NFC microSD card is inserted. This casing then fits onto the iPhone, plugging into the device's dock connector. The product looks as neat and discreet as a protective shell can be, but it is unclear if the case needs to be removed to charge the iPhone. The video goes on to show a transaction being made, with the user selecting a payment application on the iPhone's screen and then waving the device over a terminal to pay.

You can also find more details on Apple's own plans for NFC, iTunes and the iPhone here.