TMCnet News
NFC Emerges as Best Choice for Mobile Payment StandardBEIJING, Jun 24, 2010 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- After working out specific regulations on third-party mobile payment, the Chinese authority has been in pursuit of a national industry standard for mobile payment. But as the three major Chinese telecom carriers have chosen their side by adopting China UnionPay's UFC, the result has become evident. Lately, mobile phone giant Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK) said that it would equip all of its smartphones with NFC chips starting from 2011, giving the NFC league a big shot in the arm given the fact that it is holding 41% of the global smartphone market. Nokia launched the world's first NFC enabled mobile phone, 6131i, in China in July 2007. And the commercial trials using Nokia 6131i for mobile payment have been completed successfully in several Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, Xiamen, and Beijing. Latest statistics from IDC show that last year Nokia shipped 67.7 million smartphones, twice as many as those of RIM. Nokia's dominance in the smartphone market is expected to allow it to play a key role in the mobile payment sector in China. China has been struggling between the 2.4GHz RF-SIM and the 13.56MHz NFC. If it adopts RF-SIM, most Chinese mobile phone users will simply need to replace their SIM cards to realize mobile payment, but RF-SIM has trouble working with existing POS terminals. And it will cost too much for the country to set up a new POS network. NFC is fully compatible with current POS terminals, but it requires handset users to replace their mobile phones. NFC is a contactless technology based on open interface and standard platform. Nokia is actively participated in the development of NFC Standards, and co-founded the NFC Forum with Philips and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE). With the development of NFC technology, mobile phone becomes a safe, convenient, speedy and fashionable payment instrument. NFC technology is compatible with current contactless smart card infrastructure, so there is no need for significant upfront investment on NFC technology. Chinese bank-card network China UnionPay announced last month that it had formed a Mobile Payment Industry Alliance that includes 18 national and local banks and supports international contactless standards as it keeps up the pressure on China Mobile Ltd. (SEHK: 0941 and NYSE: CHL)'s RF-SIM-based payment scheme. Although UnionPay did not mention China Mobile's RF-SIM by name and, in fact, it counted China Mobile as one of the members of the new alliance, it's obvious that China Mobile's SIM-based payment scheme is one of the driving forces behind the formation of the group. China Mobile also has begun the commercial deployment of mobile contactless payments based on RF SIM technology. The new SIMs, which incorporate both a payments chip and a contactless antenna, are now widely available from China Mobile stores and can be purchased for a one-off fee of USD22. (USD 1 = CNY 6.83) Source: www.nanfangdaily.com.cn (June 24, 2010) |