Trial tests cell phones as swipe pay cards | Las Vegas Herald

Trial tests cell phones as swipe pay cards

Las Vegas Herald Tuesday 16th December, 2003

A new trial will allow thousands of Japanese mobile phone owners to use them as a swipe card to pay for purchases, as travel passes, and as concert tickets.

The journal The New Scientist reports the trial tht began Wednesday is the first to embed smart cards within the phones, and has been set up by phone company NTT DoCoMo and electronics giant Sony.

Like other contactless smartcards, the user simply has to place their phone near a reader to exchange information. This does away with the need to have printed tickets or passes. So, for example, a cinema ticket could be bought using the phone's online features, with a swipe of the phone giving entry to the screening.

The convergence of these two technologies is attractive and technically quite straightforward, said Rob Bamforth, an analyst with Bloor Research in Bletchley, England.

Mobile phone systems are already built to be secure and already have different payment models, he said, and most people now carry them in developed countries.