Making it pay
Back at Mobile World Congress in February, a company called DeviceFidelity was promoting a product called In2Pay. This is a microSD card that imbues a smartphone with contactless payment functionality - i.e. the ability to pay for stuff by merely waving your smartphone at a compatible terminal, a bit like the Oyster system on the London Underground.
As we reported at the time a lot of companies, including ARM and NXP, are banking on contactless payments via smartphones eventually replacing cash and credit cards. But right now, the world's most popular smartphone - the iPhone - doesn't have a microSD slot.
To overcome this problem, DeviceFidelity joined up with one of the companies with the most to gain from embracing this new technology - credit card outfit Visa - to make a protective case for the iPhone that allows the In2Pay microSD to work with it. The case was officially launched yesterday.
"The more than 200,000 apps on the App Store are an integral part of iPhone users' lives." said Amitaabh Malhotra, COO of DeviceFidelity. "With our In2Pay solution, we want to give both iPhone users and app developers the power to do even more, by putting the convenience of interactive secure mobile transactions, right at their fingertips, anywhere they are."
"Visa is working to bring the security and convenience of digital currency to mobile users around the world," said Dave Wentker, head of mobile contactless payments at Visa. "Our collaboration with DeviceFidelity can extend the reach of Visa mobile payments to millions of iPhone users."
As ever with a new contactless payment initiative, this product will only succeed when the attendant infrastructure gets up to speed. Not only do you need terminals at the locations mobile commercial transactions are likely to occur, you need banks, retailers, etc to get on-board. This technology is a slow burner, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Here's a vid.
