The inconvenience of pockets full of heavy coins will be a thing of the past if the contactless micro payments initiative of the mobile telecommunications and payments industries is realised. Contactless technologies known as Near Field Communications (NFC), are already widely used in transport systems. For example, the Oyster card system in London, or recent trials of MasterCard’s PayPass in New York City. However these systems are often closed loop, only allowing the user to conduct one type of transaction (in the case of the Oyster card to purchase transportation services).
Typically users fund their cards by providing a 소액결제현금화 rolling credit card mandate via a website, or are provided with credit via an existing banking relationship. However, if the card is lost or stolen, users risk losing money much in the same way as losing cash in a wallet today. By their very nature, the NFC cards of today’s transport systems have no user interface.
Today, few of us leave home without both money and a mobile phone: the opportunity to converge both compelling.
The practical challenges of realising this convergence are far from simple. The impact of the changes goes far beyond that experienced by either the mobile or payments industry to date. For example, mobile phone handsets need to support new interfaces (both at the radio and user interface level), payments and mobile core networks need to securely support this new channel, merchant terminals and retailers EPOS systems need changing and of course consumers need educating. Many industry experts believe we won’t see contactless (NFC) style of payments surpass old fashion cash until 2025. What’s more, in order for this change to occur major investment has to be funded and a new economic value system created.
However, the citizens of Japan have been benefiting from the convenience of purchasing a wide variety of goods and services from their mobile phones from a wide range of outlets for many years. Why does the rest of the world lag so far behind? Is it a technological advantage? Perhaps it’s a culture phenomena? Or perhaps it’s simply because the system was driven by the rail operator in Tokyo?
