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Paying With the Wave of a Cellphone

Posted by timothy on from the gesticulate-wildly dept.

holy_calamity writes "Tech Review discusses how it will soon be possible to pay in stores by waving your cellphone over a contactless reader, thanks to new handsets due next year, and RFID stickers and cases offered today by firms including Visa. It's convenient for shoppers, but a major driver of the technology is the opportunity for retailers to gain access to their customers' cellphones and social networks for marketing purposes."

12 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Dreaming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We can't even get chip-based cards fully deployed universally let alone this.

  2. Mark of the beast! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    [13:16] And it maketh all, the small, and the great, and the rich, and the poor, and the freemen, and the servants, that it may give to them a mark upon their right hand or upon their foreheads, [13:17] and that no one may be able to buy, or to sell, except he who is having the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. --Revelations 13:16-17, New Testament (Young's Literal Translation)

    I know it's against Slashdot protocol and all to cite religious texts, but if this isn't the prophecy from the Book of Revelation coming true, I don't know what is. I don't know about the rest of you, but the first time they try to inject that thing into my hand, I'm going to cite this religion text and state boldly and unwaveringly that it is against my religion to have an RFID implant. Posted AC because the mere mention of religion here without bashing it poses great risk to karma.

    1. Re:Mark of the beast! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Why is it against your religion to comply to a prophecy of one of its main prophets? Finally there is a way to prove even some of the stuff is true and you're obstructing it by refusing to give in.

    2. Re:Mark of the beast! by gad_zuki! · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Except, you know, context. The whole book was little more than a thinly veiled attack on the Roman authorities. John was very much an anti-establishment character. He was especially critical of the worship of the Emperor as a deity. Not to mention John, like most early Christians, expected all this to happen in his lifetime.

      >but the first time they try to inject that thing into my hand

      The same "they" that make you carry a cellphone? The same "they" that make you use facebook? If anything you'll be clamoring for the chip our of peer pressure and convenience. It turns out you don't need this mysterious oppressor or 1st conspiracy theories. You just need consumerism and laziness to end up with a chip in your hand. One of the neat things of capitalism is that it gives you enough rope to hang yourself, the trick is not to hang yourself with it.

    3. Re:Mark of the beast! by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "the mark if the beast" is an outward sign that one is a follower of "the beast". It's a lot closer to saying "no one can buy or sell without proof of membership in X religion (or political party)."

  3. Re:Old people already use that in Japan by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Pretty much this. NFC payment via phones has been one of the main reasons why western style smartphones like iphone have been a complete and utter failure in Japan. If you can't even do basic things like pay for your train ticket with a smartphone, then what good is the smart part?

    Imagine an iphone that you couldn't send or receive text messages with. Would you buy it? NFC payments are so widespread there that it's in the same general category in Japan.

  4. Re:Old people already use that in Japan by coalrestall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would guess a lot of those people playing with iPhones have second phones as well. iPhone is still the second and third best selling phone in Japan at the moment (beaten from first only recently by an Android handset) so again, nothing like a failure. Source: http://www.analytica1st.com/2010/11/japan-best-selling-phones-apple-iphone.html The RFID enabled phones here do actually work quite well. They work on the train systems, convenience stores and news stands, some vending machines, an increasing number of restaurants, not to mention points cards at different stores etc. Additionally they can be used as coupons at places like McDonalds where you enter your discounted order onscreen then wave your phone over the sensor to order it. What makes it hard is that there isn't one universal card system that works everywhere; you have to install lots of different card type applications into the phone and activate each one individually. Thankfully the machines when you scan over them can broadly identify which card to charge, but if the same machine can access your suica card (for trains), your credit card and any of the several other payment option cards you have installed, you have to manually tell it which one to go for, after a bit of a while. You may as well have just gotten the right card out of your wallet in the first place. Oh, and with the exception of credit cards, putting money into the phone's RFID card for services such as Suica is a major hassle.

  5. Re:Old people already use that in Japan by nospam007 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "If you can't even do basic things like pay for your train ticket with a smartphone,"

    I live in old Europe but I have been paying parking fees, train and bus tickets for years with my phone.
    For the trains and buses the phone even _is_ the ticket, just an SMS that you show to the train/bus guy.
    And I initiate the payment by sending a single letter as SMS message, completely under my control.

  6. Not just Japan by x_IamSpartacus_x · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not just in japan. I submitted a story about Malaysia rolling this out over a year and a half ago. Heck, In 2007 Wells Fargo started testing a pay-by-phone in the USA. This has been happening in Asia for a long time and coming in the USA for a long time.

  7. Re:First call by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And do a lot of programming. For instance, I cannot remove those stupid facebook, twitter, etc "features" from my N900 because they are in the basic part of it. I am not sure if I even could remove them with a half year dedicated study of the OS and development documentation.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  8. Re:Mobile banking by tophermeyer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would hope that the user can control that. Personally I think I would prefer to have to explicitly authorize every single transaction.

    I think it could be done conveniently though. Either by having the user up an app real quick to enable the RFID chip, or by prompting for a PIN whenever a transaction is attempted.

  9. what by fishingmachine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    so let me get this straight, you can only do it at certain retailers, with certain phones, there is a very small spending limit, it either a. charges with no notification posing obvious security risks or b. requires confirmation on the phone. while sharing your personal information with the retailer and marketers. can someone remind me how exactly this is more convenient than cash or credit card in any way at all?