Mobile phones to become electronic wallets
Mobile phones to become electronic wallets
Mobile phones users could soon be able to use their mobile phones to pay for goods by simply waving their devices over a sensor to confirm payments.
Japan's NTT DoCoMo company introduced a virtual shopping mall for mobile phones in 2003, which allowed people to buy goods by charging the transaction to their mobile phone bills.
NTT DoCoMo's new i-mode FeliCa service will now allow users to buy goods through the use of sensors from the 9,000 outlets that are involved with Sony's Edy e-money system, bringing together the worlds of prepaid and postpaid transactions.
Services can be customised by signing up with service providers that include All Nippon Airways, East Japan Railway Company and McDonald's.
Forty service companies will supply software that will make the mobile wallets usable.
Clare Hirst, the analyst who conducted the "Market Focus: Contactless Chip Cards, Worldwide, 2003-2008" report talked about the growing popularity and use of contactless chip cards that will be used in the phones: "Contactless chip cards transmit and receive data via radio frequency (RF) technology at distances ranging from a few millimetres to several inches - physical contact is required.
"Contactless cards have been used in a simple form for physical access control, but are being considered and used for national and corporate ID schemes, especially in environments that require reliable authentication, multiple application access and storage of digital signatures or biometric templates."
Gartner expects the worldwide contactless chip card market to grow rapidly between now and 2008.
Gartner, however, also indicated that this service will be tested when retailers are given the chance to decide whether to accept contactless payments at the point of sale.
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