‘Pay by mobile’ pilot scheme rings true

BEWARE, your mobile phone will soon be burning a hole in you pocket — and not because its battery is getting too hot.

Instead new technology will allow the palm-sized conduit for constant communication to have the cash registers ringing in an entirely different way.

Forget credit cards, lasers and cheque books, next year residents of one Kildare town will have the option of paying for goods by simply waving their mobile phones.

The groundbreaking experiment is part of at least nine pilot projects being sampled around the world over the coming months.

And communications’ company O2 has picked Clane, Co Kildare, as its testing ground.

The technology is a step beyond any electronic payment already on the market.

Instead of swipe cards or credit card numbers, this involves a chip getting imbedded in a person’s handset so all a shopper needs to do is wave it at a reading machine.

The amount can then be taken from a person’s pre-paid credit or added to their monthly bill.

Yesterday, O2 was tight-lipped about the project as it is still finalising the details and will not make an announcement for a number of months.

However, the company’s head of innovation capability Philip Comerford confirmed to the international Card Technology magazine the experiment was on its way to Kildare.

“It’s a customer trial. [To see] will they take to it? Will they use it? Will there be uplift in parts of the value chain?” he said.

The Clane trial will involve about 50 traders in the town supporting the technology.

It will also require about 300 people to test the technology who will shop in the town. The company has not indicated which banks will participate.

The experiment is expected to get its first outing in the first three months of next year.

The Pay-by-Mobile technology is gathering pace around the world since the International GSM Association launched it properly in February.

In the handful of successful trials carried out so far all the chips have been stored on SIM cards and it is expected this will become standard practice.