Cash, credit or cellphone? Plan offers new way to pay - 0 views
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Leave your wallets at home, people. You'll soon be able to pay by cellphone.
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Canada's three big wireless service providers are hatching a system that promises to change the way people shop.
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Bell Canada, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility said yesterday they have set up a mobile commerce company in Toronto to work on a network that would let consumers use their cellphones to pay for everything from vending machine munchies to transit trips.
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The jointly owned company, Wireless Payment Services, aims to standardize and commercialize an easy-to-use mobile phone payment system. The carriers declined to say how much they're spending on the initiative.
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The announcement is the latest example of Canada's wireless providers joining forces to push potentially revolutionary technology.
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It's also further evidence that cellphones are moving way beyond their traditional use and into music playing, gaming, Internet and other applications.
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Prepaid wireless users will be affected first. The aim is to allow them to use their phones to buy more account minutes instead of having to visit a merchant.
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After that, the carriers want to gradually roll out the system at retail points of sale and service centres like ticketing outlets.
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"What the user will be able to do, ultimately, is to tap or wave their mobile device in front of a point-of-sale terminal to pay," said Jeff Chorlton, president of Wireless Payment Services.
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Many handset makers have begun trials to add a payment function to their cellphone product lines. Payment works through a short-range wireless technology called near-field communication. NFC lets users exchange information securely by bringing two electronic devices close together.
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The technology could forever alter consumer lifestyles, predicts the NFC Forum, an industry group promoting the technology founded in 2004 by Nokia Corp., Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corp.
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The Forum offers this future scenario on its website: "With Near Field Communication enabled devices, you will make your travel reservations on your PC and download your tickets to your mobile phone or PDA, just by bringing it next to the computer. Then you will check in for your trip by touching your hand-held device to the departure gate kiosk - no paper, no printing."
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The system will allow retailers and other companies to save money, Chorlton said. "For some merchants, it could represent the roll-out of infrastructure at very low cost because the infrastructure largely exists through hand-held devices."
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Mobile users in such places as Hong Kong and Finland are already using NFC technology to hop on a bus or buy some new threads. Canadians should take to wireless payment because they already frequently use cashless commerce like debit cards, said Dennis Kira, an e-commerce specialist at Concordia University.