Near Field Communication - pay by phone

GetWithIt

Asked this in the Consumer Electronics - Mobiles PDAs section and drew a blank.

Does anyone have a handle on what a retailer would need to do to jump on board Google's pay by phone service, available in the summer by all accounts?

Near Field Communication device - any Irish distributors?

Develop your own app or would there be a generic service/app?

For any retailer looking to cut down on costs and differentiate themselves on the high street this seems to me to be a no brainer.

Atomic Pineapple

It will take consumers years to get over the fear factor involved in NFC.

Anyway the Nexus S has an NFC chip in it and has been available for a few months now. A retailer would have to provide the other end point, both hardware and software and pay for software to be developed for the device also.

In time I presume generic solutions will become available.

srsly78

You would need a payment processor in Ireland to support it. It's not something you could setup yourself I think... They are using it more and more in London.

@Draffodx: Wrong. Millions of people in London use NFC everyday. And have done for the last 5+ years. How did they get everyone to switch? 50% off when you use NFC, wallop everyone switched overnight.

Atomic Pineapple

srsly78 wrote: »

You would need a payment processor in Ireland to support it. It's not something you could setup yourself I think... They are using it more and more in London.

@Draffodx: Wrong. Millions of people in London use NFC everyday. And have done for the last 5+ years. How did they get everyone to switch? 50% off when you use NFC, wallop everyone switched overnight.

London isn't as backwards as Ireland, can you see retailers offer 50% off here?

GetWithIt

draffodx wrote: »

London isn't as backwards as Ireland, can you see retailers offer 50% off here?

I would. No doubt about it.

If NFC transactions have a 0% charge on them versus 2% for Credit Card then the long term benefits to the retailer are massive.

jimmycrackcorm

GetWithIt wrote: »

For any retailer looking to cut down on costs and differentiate themselves on the high street this seems to me to be a no brainer.

Paying by NFC option is far from a no-brainer as there's unlikely to be much interest in it. As an example NIB and the Blanchardstown centre ran a similar trial scheme for cashless payments. The takeup response was very poor.

Until NFC is as standard a component in phones as bluetooth, I cannot see much interest in progressing it.

I'd love to see it on Dublin bus / Luas instead of buying smart cards -that would be so convenient but it'll never happen based on the integrated ticketing fiasco so far.

Atomic Pineapple

GetWithIt wrote: »

I would. No doubt about it.

If NFC transactions have a 0% charge on them versus 2% for Credit Card then the long term benefits to the retailer are massive.

Thats true, I still don't see NFC being widespread in Ireland for years to come, I hope I'm wrong as I think its a great technology but for it to work both retailers and consumers have to get behind it and I just don't see it getting that much support in Ireland for at least the next few years.

thirtythirty

There are terminals + gateway provider + infrastructure provider on the way.
Early next year I think.

What I don't know is if any banks are looking at the provision of touch cards, or whether the whole system is being aimed squarely at phone use.

srsly78

Doesn't matter. There is no difference between smartcards and phone, except the phone can contain multiple virtual cards.

colster

GetWithIt wrote: »

Asked this in the Consumer Electronics - Mobiles PDAs section and drew a blank.

Does anyone have a handle on what a retailer would need to do to jump on board Google's pay by phone service, available in the summer by all accounts?

Near Field Communication device - any Irish distributors?

Develop your own app or would there be a generic service/app?

For any retailer looking to cut down on costs and differentiate themselves on the high street this seems to me to be a no brainer.

Have you looked at these guys? http://www.zapatag.ie/

GetWithIt

Just recently. They seem to be furthest on, locally, with doing something with this.

Red Silurian

Does NFC require a pin? They were trying for ages to put the chip and pin facilities into credit/debit cards in order to make them more secure so would there possibly be any legal issues with NFC from that point of view?

srsly78

Well your phone requires a PIN doesn't it?

NFC will likely be configurable. For microtransactions maybe you won't need a PIN, but once you do more than a tenners worth it might prompt you for security.

Atomic Pineapple

NFC is just the communication, I'd imagine a credit/debit card app will require a PIN

Red Silurian

Makes sense I guess