Tag: nfc mobile payments

The company has announced a number of smartphone friendly transaction services.

Telefónica’s German international wireless carrier brand, called Telefónica Deutschland, has just announced that it will launch a new smartphone-to smartphone direct money transfer and service as well as mobile payments wallet service.

The goal of the company is to propel the world forward toward a cashless society.

According to the Telefónica Germany CEO, René Schuster, “Soon, children will only know from history books what a wallet and hard cash are.” He added that “Mobile payment with your smartphone has arrived in Germany. Our customers will soon be transferring money mobile-to-mobile and paying in shops using their digital wallet.”

The new peer to peer service will be the first of the mobile payments services that are launched.

This will occur in February by way of a wireless carrier. This element of the mobile payments offerings will be called mpass. By using mpass, smartphone users will be able to make money transfers to other mpass accounts in real time. All the sender will need to know about the recipient is her or her cell phone number. The company has stated that the process is very user friendly and is a free service.

The app to use mpass will be made available to users of devices based on both iOS and Android operating systems. It will require a one-time registration the first time that the service is activated, but the information will be saved after that point so that it does not need to be re-entered.

Beyond the initial mobile payments launch of the P2P service, Telefónica Deutschland has said that it will also offer consumers their O2 Wallet. This is a smartphone wallet that will function using NFC technology in order to allow contactless transactions to occur at a participating merchant’s point of sale. This service will use the PayPass technology from MasterCard in order to provide secure credentials confirmation and payment data from the NFC chip equipped smartphone to the reader device at the register.

Telefónica Deutschland consumers will be sent a new free NFC pack that includes an NFC SIM card so that they will be able to download the app, register, and use these mobile payments and wallet services.

Many companies are adopting this close range connectivity tech for new and surprising reasons.

Although NFC technology has been receiving the largest amount of attention due to the many massive attempts being made to introduce it to the mobile payments sphere, companies are also finding a number of other unique and helpful uses.

In fact, it is expected that payments may end up being one of the lesser uses.

At a recent large electronics show, several companies – including the event itself – applied NFC technology in a range of different ways. These chips were unveiled in numerous devices and were used for many different purposes. According to the Broadcom CEO, Scott McGregor, “NFC really simplifies things.” His company is a chipmaker that sees considerable value in this tech. He added that “The most advanced technology is stifled if it’s not easy to use. … NFC plays a very valuable role in simplifying user interfaces for consumer products.”

NFC technology is now being used for everything from payments to coupons, tickets, press releases and other data exchanges.

While the focus is primarily placed on mobile payments through NFC technology that would allow smartphones to be used at a point of sale in order to complete a purchase by tapping the device against a reader, the world isn’t quite there yet. It is still quite rare for point of sale terminals to be equipped with readers, which significantly limits the use of the chips, even among those who would be interested and have enabled smartphones.

However, recently, new consumer electronics are being launched that include NFC technology for whole new reasons. Enabled devices aren’t just smartphones anymore. Instead, they include televisions, speakers, refrigerators, cameras, and even business cards. Panasonic, for example, has added a chip to its rice cookers.

This is considerably expanding the possibilities connected with NFC technology. Clearly, it is not simply a one trick pony, and electronics companies are taking it seriously. Though many still expect that it will soon experience explosive use through smartphones, it is evident that device manufacturers of all kinds intend to try to take advantage of its benefits in many new and exciting ways.