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DoCoMo Starts Cell Phone Smart Card Trial
virtualXTC writes "The Japanese phone company NTT DoCoMo and electronics giant Sony will begin a trial of cell phones with embedded smart cards with speed pass-like capabilities that will allow the user to purchase anything from travel passes to movie tickets just by placing their cell phone near an electronic reader. Potentially the smart card 'can serve as an ID card, travel pass, or login for a corporate computer network, all at the same time'. If they'd just attach a money clip to it, I could get rid of my wallet entirely."
Cellphone allows users to swipe and go
15:23 16 December 03
NewScientist.com news service
A trial starting on Wednesday will allow thousands of Japanese mobile phone owners to use their phones as a swipe card to pay for purchases, as travel passes, and as concert and movie tickets.
The trial 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, says Rob Bamforth, an analyst with Bloor Research in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, UK.
"Mobile phone systems are already built to be secure and already have different payment models," he says, and most people now carry them in developed countries.
Multiple functions
The cards in the trial are capable of storing about two kilobytes of information, enough for it to perform multiple functions. For example it can serve as an ID card, travel pass, or login for a corporate computer network, all at the same time.
As people increase their use of phones for retail purposes, the role of the mobile phone operator may change, Bamforth told New Scientist. "It makes them more analogous to credit card companies."
The Japanese trial will run until summer 2004 and during this time thousands of specially adapted phones will be handed out to employees of the 25 companies that are participating in the scheme. Services will include being able to buy tickets and check-in at airports using their phone.
Swipe cards have long been used on public transport systems in Japan. The smartcard technology being used in the phones, called FeliCa, was originally developed by Sony in 1988.
But what sets the new trial apart from other smartcard systems and from previous electronic wallet schemes is the ability of the phone to store a receipt of a purchase on the smartcard chip within the phone.
Duncan Graham-Rowe
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
Taking into account the fact that Japan is possibly the last of the developed countries where you can use your ATM card ONLY at your bank's machine, it is more han likely that DoCoMo's smartcard would only work at DoCoMo's POS terminals, plus other places which have (possibly exclusive) business relationship (ie. clients) with DoCoMo.
Let's wait for ISO, ASA, or some standarization body, this won't cut it.
BTW, in Finland and most of Western Europe, (and in Japan too) you can pay for your snack purchases by you phone (no need for the smartcard), so what is exactly news about this??
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
As a retailer, I can say that there is no way I'd spend money accepting something like this. At least not for many, many years. Look at the current retail environment... it's being destroyed by people shopping online, cutting into margins. Most retailers STILL don't accept Amex (I do), even though accepting Amex takes a 5 minute telephone call, and $0 additional investment. Hell, it took the fast food chains many years to ever take credit cards. Considering how much $$ this is going to cost us as retailers, I can say that there's no way in hell I'd do this until it becomes very, very universal, and a large number of customers start asking for it (no, 1 or 2 geeks doesn't count as a large number of customers). Credit cards work just fine, anyway. This is another solution to a non-existent problem.
Bank robbers are not caught using serial numbers. They are convicted with serial numbers. When I was a teller (many years ago now so it may have changed) they used to have a stack of 100's that we kept logged in our drawer. If we were robbed the log of numbers went to the cops to aid in conviction. There are far too many places to pass off bills for it to be an effective way to actually catch anybody.
Cell phones now debit cards in S. Korea
Infrared lifestyle: South Koreans pay using cellphones
"cash still goes places where American Express/Visa/whatever have not been and probably never will be."
That includes the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions that are not legal (drugs, prostitution, most gambling).
IIRC, drugs are about 4% (by value) of all international trade.
-B
No keypad tampering / double readers (one real, one scam / double swipes. Scan, enter pin and wait for confirmation. If it fails, just try resending the same confirmation. If it *was* high-jacked by a fake signal which you erroneously approved, you'd notice because the store would continue to refuse it.
Throw in a little failsafe, like "Warning: Remote fingerprint changed compared to previous session X seconds ago" and maybe ultimarely over GSM, like "Automatically contest this claim if someone tries this transaction, it was not completed successfully" to the bank.
I'd never accept confirmation-free, it could fire on anything from a brush-pass or the guy next to me on the bus/train/tram/subway. Even if it did work when the keypad was not locked, it'd take just as long to hit "Menu, *, "scan", menu, *" as it would take to do a 4-digit pin + "OK"...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, you can use your cash card at multiple banks' machines. Japan may be backward in terms of ATMs only having hours of business from 8am to 7pm or so on average, or most refusing to accept foreign-issued credit cards, but for the major banks, all have usage agreements with one or more competitor.
The difference is that this smart card is off-line, an electronic wallet type idea, not an online transaction, so it has all the speed benefits associated with it. The main use, I suspect, is going to be for commuter passes and other pre-paid train cards (see the current FeLiCa/Suica/Icoca system in use by JR, for instance), so you don't want to have to wait for 1 minute while trying to dial up to confirm you are allowed to go through the ticket gate.