Tag: nfc mobile payments

Mass transit users in Romania will be able to use their smartphones to pay for their passage.

The Bucharest mass transit system in Romania has just announced that, starting this month, it will make it possible for NFC technology enabled smartphones to be used in order to use mobile payments for purchasing travel fare.

This is meant to appeal to the rapidly growing number of smartphone using commuters in the city.

The Bucharest mobile payments announcement came from the system’s operator, Metrorex. The reason that NFC technology enabled smartphone systems will be implemented throughout the service following a successful trial period at seven different stations in the city. The company determined that the popularity of the transactions merited an expansion of the program throughout every station in the city.

Certain wireless service subscribers will have access to the NFC technology and text mobile payments for fares.

Though this may expand in the future, at the moment, Orange and Vodafone wireless carrier subscribers will be able to text a message to a special number that places the fare charge on the smartphone user’s account. That customer is then texted a message as confirmation.

This comes at a time that a service in India’s city of Chennai has also announced that it will be using NFC technology when it opens its rail system in 2015. That system will not be using the text method like the one in Bucharest.

By using the text based mobile payments services, it means that the transactions won’t be available only to individuals who have NFC technology embedded in their devices. This is important as the tech is only currently available in a small percentage of devices. Text opens up the opportunity to the majority of device carriers. This metro service currently has a network of 51 different stations throughout Bucharest.

Every year, the system transports over 170 million passengers, according to the statistics provided by Metrorex. During the pilot for this fare transaction program, there were over 10,000 validations that were reliably and successfully processed. The data regarding the number of expected users for this year or regarding NFC technology transactions has not yet been released.

Deutsche Telekom finds new partners to expand mobile payments throughout Europe

Deutsche Telekom, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, has found two new vendors to support its deployment of NFC-based mobile commerce systems. These vendors are B+S Card Services and Intercard. Together, the vendors form a network through which NFC-based mobile payments can be made more available to consumers. In Europe, the demand for comprehensive mobile commerce services is increasing rapidly, pressuring Deutsche Telekom to reach out for partners in its continued efforts to make mobile payments more common.

NFC-based mobile payments to be major focus

The telecommunications company has been an advocate of mobile payments for some time, favoring solutions that make use of NFC technology. This technology is responsible for facilitating mobile payments as it allows for digital information to be transmitted over short distanced. Indeed, NFC is one of the pillars of the mobile commerce world, helping it take form and expanding its acceptance throughout the world. Deutsche Telekom has been developing several NFC-based mobile commerce platforms in order to meet the growing needs of consumers.

Infrastructure to be expanded in Germany

The vendors will help bolster the infrastructure required to process mobile payments at point-of-sale terminals and vending machines. These efforts will be primarily focused on the German market initially. Expansion of this infrastructure is likely to happen within the next few years, as mobile commerce becomes more common in several industries. These efforts are just a portion of the overall plan of Deutsche Telekom, which has been branching into several fields of mobile commerce to find ways to promote mobile payments among consumers.

NFC may be becoming less popular in mobile commerce

NFC technology has been the subject of criticism for some time, mostly due to its lackluster security features. Some companies claim that NFC is just not capable of providing the security necessary to make mobile commerce common among consumers. Along with the current lack of NFC-enabled mobile devices, the technology is quickly becoming a less prominent focus on the mobile commerce field.