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Do You Accept Cellphone Payments?
beuges writes "In one of South Korea's latest efforts to establish itself as a technology trendsetter, the country's three telecom giants, major credit card companies and several banks have been working for a year to enable Koreans to pay for everything from groceries to petrol by cellphone."
You may recall seeing something about it during the Superbowl a few years back.
Here's a tip for all you inventors looking to make things easy for the rest of us: CELL PHONES DO NOT HAVE A SIMPLE ENOUGH INTERFACE FOR MOST COMMON INTERACTIONS.
What happens when you lose your cell phone. It happens often enough but when that's all that's gone it's not too bad. If it's your phone, credit card, ID, etc. that'a a hugh problem.
-Tim Louden
"In the future thieves only will have to steal one handset," Lee said. "It will be their window to your world." - Sapa-AP
Maybe that's not what they said. But with the recent theft of my T-Mobile Sidekick fresh in my mind, I am hesitant to put so much faith in my easiliy pilferable devices.
(counter-point: credit cards can be stolen, yes, but my sidekick was not nearly as wallet/back pocket friendly as a credit card, thus not suck to my ass all day giving it a better chance of being stolen)
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
...cellphones weren't already complex enough? I don't carry a Swiss Army Knife or a Leatherman, when all I need is one blade. For the very same reason, I'm strongly against most cluttery "features" like this.
First give me a product that has a useable interface and spend some time making sure I can dial the thing one-handed. Add useful PHONE features, not useful kitchen utensils and assorted toys. Use that extra space on a huge battery I only have to charge once a week. In short, make my cellphone better, not just different.
-theGreater Luddite.
SMS gateways are getting slower by the day... imagine waiting at a checkout queue and somebody in front of you waiting for a SMS to arrive....
SMS service center equipments and standards needs to be upgraded first.
It will be a great service when implemented correctly, several companies in europe has already tried it.. car wash, wending machines.
but its damn slow.. slower than waiting for a credit card slip to print out...
Don't kid yourself, the US never had any kind of lead in this sector at any time what-so-ever.
Harsh, I know, but sadly true.
I read about this the other day in the Journal; the article there was about an Aussie phone company partnering with Coke to enable purchasing drinks from a vending machine with your cellphone. The article also mentioned the potential for just about anything to be purchased in this manner. The product prices are just added to your phone bill.
And I soon got to thinking, what about people who have kids, or especially teenagers, and want to give them cellphones (very useful in an emergency, f'rinstance). Suddenly, giving them a cellphone is tantamount to giving them a credit card.
And someone is going to come up the idea of a special cell phone, or a special subscription, that disables cellphone-based purchases, and some bozo is going to try and patent that idea, despite the fact that you heard it here first.
Okay, but how is this different from the jerks who write their PINs on their banking / debit cards? I'm sure they run crying to their bank when their bank cards get stolen.
I can't say that the idea of my cell phone being MORE attractive to theives is realy all that appleaing, but the ease of use sort of makes up for it. We'd all have to be a little more cautious and careful with how we handle ourselves, and in return, we'd have all this convenience. Give and take, right?
"Honey, the front door won't open"
"Is the phone working?"
"damn...forgot to charge the battery last night!"
Sometimes, the lowtech answer is best.
And what do you suppose will happen when a reverse engineer figures out the encryption technique used and just intercepts the outgoing signal from your "key"?
I think if that happens, it wouldn't tangibly affect the amount of car theft. Just look how things are today. Almost every police officer or tow truck operator carries what's essentially a fancy coat hanger in their trunk that will slide under the window and unlock just about any car door. And any second-rate thug knows how to hot wire a car or jimmy the door to your house. Yet, even with this, car theft and burglary isn't an enormous problem.
But having said that, I'll concede the point that bluetooth isn't appropriate. Fine. I'll still happily take a line-of-sight infrared (or, better yet, laser) device to open my door, start my car, and get into my house. That way, I'll never have to worry about my car and house entry codes getting leaked.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
"Right" is like this: Seller generates a transaction, sends it to the phone, buyer's phone displays the transaction, customer approves, phone signs the transaction and sends it to the seller. Seller sends transaction to bank. Bank validates transaction and replies to seller. Optionally, bank sends transaction to buyer's computer elsewhere (typically corporate purchases).
Seller can only deposit that transaction; they can't create new ones or change the amount.
Did they do it right?