Canada’s three largest operators getting together for mobile payments

Canada’s three main operators: Bell, Rogers and Telus, are joing forces to launch a mobile payment system called Zoompass. It’s supposed to be launching on June 15th and will allow customers to send, receive and request money, with a $0.50 fee to send money and transfer funds from your Zoompass account to your bank account. Zoompass is built on EnStream software and that’s just about all the information we have. The website is blank.

Transactions from mobile devices are supposed to reach $1.6 billion this year according to ABI Research, but I have strong doubts about that claim. Paying with cash is easy, you take pieces of paper and metal out of your pocket, give it to someone, who in turn gives you a product. Credit cards are even easier. You give a piece of plastic to someone, they swipe it, in some countries you sign a piece of paper, in others you enter a pin code, and then bam, you get your product. How is something like Zoompass going to take off when you’re going to have people fumbling about, typing long strings of digits on a UI that will vary phone by phone? Grandma can’t even check her voicemail, how is she going to Zoompass Timmy $5 for candy?

Near Field Communication (NFC) needs to launch already. The GSMA approved the single wire protocol that can tie an NFC chip directly to the phone’s SIM card, so now we just have to sit patiently and wait until the software, hardware and infrastructure are rolled out that supports all of this.

I’ve never been more jealous of the Japanese.

[Via: Mobile Syrup, Unwired View]