Global Mobile Payments Effort Gathers Strength

Publié le 23 novembre 2007 par GSM

0711

Over the next few months, 12 cellphone operators around the world will launch trials of contactless m-payment services as a precursor to commercial rollouts, the GSM Association (GSMA) says. The cellphone industry association says the trials will take place in Australia, France, Ireland, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, The Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.S.

The operators running trials include AT&T, Far EasTone, Orange, KTF, Maxis, SFR, SingTel, Telstra and Turkcell.

The pilots are part of the GSMA’s Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative, which aims to provide a single global system for cellphone-based contactless payments. The GSMA wants consumers to be able to use cellphones with embedded Near Field Communications (NFC) chips to make purchases in shops, restaurants and train stations worldwide.

According to the GSMA, 35 operators with a total of 1.3 billion cellphone subscribers are taking part in Pay-Buy-Mobile, which was first announced in February 2007. The Pay-Buy-Mobile system will use the international card schemes’ existing credit and debit card networks as well as the Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass contactless standards, the GSMA says.

“Just nine months after the program was launched, the first operators are preparing for the rollout of commercial services that have the potential to become the foundation of a global, interoperable mobile payment service,” Rob Conway, the GSMA’s CEO, says in a statement.

The GSMA says that Korea’s KTF is the first operator to carry out an interoperability trial of Pay-Buy-Mobile. Executives from KTF recently paid for goods by passing their NFC-equipped handsets by contactless readers in retail outlets in Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. The transactions were processed over MasterCard’s network, the GSMA says.

For the trial, Paypass software and a credit card application from Korea’s Shinhan Bank were downloaded to KTF-issued SIM cards embedded in Samsung and LG cellphones. The retailers participating in the trial were equipped with NFC-capable readers that accepted Paypass, the GSMA says.