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Bickering Blocks US Mobile Phone Payments
theodp writes "Imagine a technology that lets you pay for products just by waving your cellphone over a reader. You wouldn't have to if you lived in Japan, where people have been using it for the last five years to pay for everything from train tickets to groceries to candy in vending machines. While nearly everyone who's tried it has liked this form of payment, consumers in the United States won't be able to wave-and-pay anytime soon: The companies that must work together to give the technology to the masses can't agree on how to split the resulting revenue."
I wish that mobile- and micropayments would gain bigger focus in the intustry. There are first pilots going on here in Europe.
OTOH: some countries (South Asia, mostly) already have problems with malware on their phone "stealing" money by sending text messages...
Could be worse. Could be raining.
But I can't see how waving my cellphone over a reader is an improvement over waving my credit card. The credit card is thinner, lighter and more waterproof than a cellphone.
When I go out, I always carry a wallet. It has my driver's license, credit card and cash in it. My cell phone may or may not be with me, depending on what I'm doing. Maybe it's in the car, or my backpack. If I were going to wave anything over a reader, it would most likely be my wallet.
Perhaps it's because I'm over 50, but when I hear people talking about combining media player, cell phone, digital camera, [whatever] into one single unit, all I see is one item that does everything "not quite as well" as the original separate items. The cellphone/camera is only 3 megapixel...OK for some uses; but not as good as my Canon point-and-shoot. My phone can hold a few gigabytes of music, nothing like the 80 G in my iPod. If the performance of the composite were equal or better, you might have me as a customer, but for now, I'll pick and choose.
Hell, I'd be happy to just get cell phone COVERAGE in a lot of the US.
Sheldon
They can also be hacked, which is also pretty neat if you're the hacker, but not if you're trying to build an infrastructure based on the cards.
Come to think of it, Chaum's electronic money (digital cash), especially the off-line anonymous variants, would be very well suited to the kind of mobile payments discussed in the article; and such a solution would preserve all the important properties of "ordinary" cash.
...We have a similar system. You pay to wave...
Expect an Oyster card (London transport card) integrated into a mobile phone in the next couple of years (I read that somewhere, I think it was official).
There's also the Barclay's credit card, RFID credit card (no need to enter a PIN for transactions under £10) and Oyster card (all three).
http://www.barclays.co.uk/credit-cards/search/index.htm
My bank card never runs out of battery, which is quite nice.
Also, I get it for free from the bank.
I can't wait to be able to steal money just by walking through a crowded room and "charging" each person's phone $5.
I've used cold hard cash, and that's neatest.
It's light, portable, needs no batteries and isn't subject to arbitrary restrictions or revocations. No devices or readers are needed. You don't need a "credit rating" to use it. And I can pay for pretty much anything, except those services which require me to spend extra cash on an alternative transaction medium.
Cash. Is. King.
May the Maths Be with you!
>> candy in vending machines
Sure, some of the rubber has fruity flavour but calling them candy?
We have enough of a problem today with people living way beyond their means, and impulse spending with the credit and debit cards we have today.
Aside from the obvious problems we have in the US with a sense of entitlement to the luxuries in life, I think easy means of payments like this work like chips in a casino do. They abstract the fact that you are spending REAL money. You forget that you bought those chips with cold hard cash. With things like credit / debit cards...you tend to forget that you have to pay for them later (wich cc's), or that your bank account just lost some cash to this transaction.
Waving a phone in front of a machine, to me, would have the same effect.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You're not eager to introduce a payment option that has less overhead costs than physical money?
Let's consider the ticket system used by JR and Tokyo metro. Millions of people passing through those gates per hour across Tokyo, and there's someone out fixing the ticket-eating mechanical parts quite regularly.
Add in the costs of having guys go around collecting coins from and filling in ticket paper into the ticket producing terminals.
Handling money costs a lot of money, and they are pushing the SUICA cards real hard with advertisement everywhere. So every passenger who's not using one of those RFID cards means less profit.
You're advocating lowering consumption by making it harder to pay...
- These characters were randomly selected.
And yet I've yet to see one in use in Japan. Granted I only stay a month there every year, but cash is king in Japan and Asia in general. I rarely see credit cards being used (although it has become a bit more common over the past 15 years).
Now, when the salesman gets finished telling me about their latest phone which can do everything short of transforming into a giant robot (feature available in the next model) and asking what I'd like to do with it, I'll look like even more of a Cellphone Luddite by saying "make calls." I don't text, rarely take cell phone photos, and don't check the Internet from my phone. I upload my own ringtones ( http://www.myxer.com/make/ ) and don't care about applications or games on my phone. All I do is make phone calls.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
As long as the money grubbing corporation are involved, there will always be more overhead.
See: $2.00 fees on ATM transactions if you use the wrong bank machine.
In spirit, it's a great idea, however will not ever be useful if someone 'has to get paid' to use the service. There may be overhead with cash, but if you're counting (and many are these days) there is no value-add if it costs more.
(2 eggs for the morning newspaper, a few grams of gold for the electricity etc)
Pssst.... that'd be currency. What, do you have a gold mine in your backyard?
And where did you get that gold? Oh, you traded some of your squash plants for a shiny metal?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It would be cool feature, if there were readers for it. As is, I can barely use my card with RFID at 2 local establishments. And at one it does not work properly all the time. Everyone else still has old credit card readers, and they have no incentive to throw away what works.
Never underestimate the lengths to which some jerk will go to make some poor government employee's job miserable. Especially if they (a) have nothing to do with why the jerk is upset, (b) are powerless to change it, and (c) would be likely to commiserate with the jerk's predicament if he weren't being such a dick about it.
-
That's right, why shouldn't we have a neat and practical new means of making transactions because some people are consumer whores? That's a bullcrap way of thinking, besides, it's no different than a credit card (which are already maxed out for these people anyways).
A new method of payment will not make a difference to those who can't control their spending.
By your line of thought we should also ban guns, I mean, Cheyney wouldn't have shot his friend in the ass if guns weren't available, right? Why don't we ban cigarettes? Heavy smokers kill themselves with those. Might as well ban the internet, I heard that some addicts ruin their lives because they spend too much time online.
This "we gotta protect everyone from everything" mentality has to end. I say let people make their own mistakes, provide help to those who want it and let nature run it's course.
~Syberz
Interesting. Truthfully, though, we are well on our way here in America to letting people avoid the consequences of bad decisions:
- Much talk about 'forgiving' the excess amount on mortgages, that is writing them down to the home's current value. Among the problems with this; The U.S. taxpayer gets to pay the difference, but doesn't get anything much. The homeowner gets out of a bad deal. The bank gets made whole. Whose error caused this? Unscrupulous lenders? Overly optimistic borrowers? Greedy banks? Investors thinking they got in on a 'sure thing' without understanding the risks and/or falsehoods involved? All of them. Quick question - why am *I*, as a taxpayer, paying for this? Oh, and paying my mortgage as well, thank you.
- People get overextended on credit pretty regularly. This is not new, so why not extend this caution to current payment methods? Oh, that would mean the U.S. economy would have to retract by the amount of 'credit/fake' income we spend on our cards etc. Some estimates are that we have been overspending in the U.S. by up to 6% a year for a decade. The bill is due.
- The objection that cell phone payments will encourage people to 'spend more' is probably true. So let's ban some advertising, pop-up/pop-under ads, etc. Sheesh.
Really.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You're not eager to introduce a payment option that has less overhead costs than physical money?
The problem is overloading functions on one device / card.
If I lose my mobile now, it's going to painful and annoying to get it replaced. If I lose it and it has cash deposited on it, then it's just more of a loss.
If I'm being mugged (or pick pocketed), then all I'm askied for now is my wallet. I don't want to have to lose my mobile as well (which I could otherwise use to call for help, a taxi, or the police).
It's the same idea with having driver's licenses or other cards that can hold monetary value (which I think a few US states have). If I have my cash stolen, no big deal, I don't carry a lot; if I have my debit card stolen, it's not too bad as they need to know my PIN, and I have it limited to how much I can withdrawal or purchase on it; with credit cards, I can deny payment.
When all of those functions are on one or two objects (cards or a mobile), then I'm really SOL if I lose it or have it stolen.
Overloading is nice for convenience, not so nice for security.
First, it's not easy, dispite what you may hear bleated by media and politians. Second, that has consequences of it's own. My wife just came out of it a few years ago (divorce lead her to bancupcy). No bank even considers her for a loan. When we refinanced, my bank wanted her not to show up on the paperwork at all. Otherwise they'd deny the loan.
Love the idea, but I don't see it working. Basically what we are talking about (Sooner or later) is the Credstick from Shadowrun. Your whole ID/Bank/Credit etc all on stick to "slot and run" The whole "Its Credit" thing is crap, it could be attached to a credit system, or it could be debt system or pre-paid. But then again Pre-paid is crap as well, its the same as gift cards, your giving money for a service your not using/getting, if the store / company goes away you lost the money, if you didn't spend the credit within a certain time, you lost the money. And then you have the problem of readers. If I win/loose the bet with the guy in the cube next to me. We have to have a reader just to know exactly what our balances are, have a way to transfer the balance, and someway of that change update to the master database. which at the root of it all is what your really talking about. But Personally putting it on your phone is a bad idea. In the last year I had 5 phones. 1 stolen, 2 upgrades, and 3 destroyed. Anyone know where your info goes, when your cell is off to the shop to be repaired or stolen. Anyone ever dropped a cell. (FYI 250$ for a new screen on a iPhone) Now ask a cabbie, or someone that works in a restaurant how many cells get left behind.... I one saw a guy with a briefcase walk through a subway station and come back with the data from every phone and pda that was powered on in the place at that time, and if you feel safe putting your funds into it go for it. It is making a more hackable, destroyable, losable, more expensive credit card that needs changed all the time. (Not to mention cellular contracts) RFID is not new, its been in use in the states for a long long time, on a lot of toll highways and bridges for commercial use. Could it be done as a sole means of monetary usage in the states, Not a Chance. US is nowhere near as small as Europe, Nor does it have the years of infrastructure in place. Unless your talking about one of the major cities (NYC, LA, etc) and even then we don't even have complete cable coverage or cell coverage here yet! Trains, Bus's, don't exist outside of those major cities which is where most people live. To Put things into comparison, for those that think that one can simply say poof and have miles and miles of line ran, and towers put up. The Whole of The UK is 245,000 km that is all of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales The Whole of the single state of Florida is 170,304 km The Whole of the United States is 9,158,960 km of land. You do the math, and please think of the Cat(6)'s
Well, the statement thing IS nice to have a record of all your expenditures, I'll grant that.
However, I rarely ever think of, or find the time to log on and go through that. Maybe once a month maybe I log on, when it is time to pay bills. I don't write many checks any more, so I don't really ever go on there and balance the check book or anything.
So, when I go straight with cash, while I don't have much a record of what I buy (unless I were go keep receipts, etc), I DO have a real time reminds of the rate of my expenditures during the week. That means more to me, that at the end of the month, looking through charges, etc...and while it IS a record...doing through and figuring out what each was for, etc.
Just the way my brain works...I do much better keeping up with my daily spending if I'm doing cash and when I pull out my wallet, I have a constant reminder of what I'm spending due to what I have left in my money clip.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........