Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Mobiles double up as bus tickets
One of the first applications of Near Field Communication is to use your mobile as a bus ticket.
From an interaction point of view, using your mobile to pay for small items is very useful - we may soon hardly need pockets full of change - and collaboration with credit card companies means that we can also use them to pay for larger goods too. Having a different device from a credit card is not going to revolutionise shopping, but offering a new way to make small (and even micro) payments is potentially revolutionary. In particularl, now that there may be a cost-effective way to collect money for small services and products, a whole new area of commerce has opened up.
And what is NFC? It's basically a development of the rfid systems we're used to, thoguh these tend to be used only for tracking and security systems in shops at the moment. You wave a device near (a few cm) from a receiver, and, much like short-range bluetooth, information can be exchanged. All the main phone manufacturers and credit card companies are talking to each other about this, so stand by for change - or, perhaps, the end of it.
One of the first applications of Near Field Communication is to use your mobile as a bus ticket.
From an interaction point of view, using your mobile to pay for small items is very useful - we may soon hardly need pockets full of change - and collaboration with credit card companies means that we can also use them to pay for larger goods too. Having a different device from a credit card is not going to revolutionise shopping, but offering a new way to make small (and even micro) payments is potentially revolutionary. In particularl, now that there may be a cost-effective way to collect money for small services and products, a whole new area of commerce has opened up.
And what is NFC? It's basically a development of the rfid systems we're used to, thoguh these tend to be used only for tracking and security systems in shops at the moment. You wave a device near (a few cm) from a receiver, and, much like short-range bluetooth, information can be exchanged. All the main phone manufacturers and credit card companies are talking to each other about this, so stand by for change - or, perhaps, the end of it.
Comments:
As to if all the privacy nuts will like this is another matter.
RFID in itself is very much up for debate at the moment, its been used for a small number of products (Razor blades and similar items which get nicked a lot)
The RFID pilot stores have usually had people outside with banners very quickly. At the moment, the only mainstream use is for warehouse / distribution for a faster and more reliable way of checking the consignments match what should be in them.
I'm not entirely sure I'd be happy doing payment authorisation from my mobile. Being able to pay for things with them leaves yet another reason to nick the darn things!
I guess it depends very much on how secure the handset manufactures secure the payment system. But by the time you have to enter a pin code, many people may well simply not bother.
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RFID in itself is very much up for debate at the moment, its been used for a small number of products (Razor blades and similar items which get nicked a lot)
The RFID pilot stores have usually had people outside with banners very quickly. At the moment, the only mainstream use is for warehouse / distribution for a faster and more reliable way of checking the consignments match what should be in them.
I'm not entirely sure I'd be happy doing payment authorisation from my mobile. Being able to pay for things with them leaves yet another reason to nick the darn things!
I guess it depends very much on how secure the handset manufactures secure the payment system. But by the time you have to enter a pin code, many people may well simply not bother.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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