NFC-enabled mobile payments may be waiting for a miracle to happen for a wider adoption in the western hemisphere, but they are already being used by high-tech folks living in Japan and South Korea. Like that’s not enough, we now have SK Telecom joining forces with Japan’s KDDI and SoftBank Mobile to develop an interoperable service available throughout both countries.
The three parties have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to make existing solutions — Combi Card, a financial service running off a USIM card in Korea, and the FeliCa mobile wallet in Japan — sing along.
To announce the initiative, SK Telecom issued a statement in which it said the following:
The signing companies plan to offer a new mobile NFC solution operable on handsets embedded with an NFC card with RFID function. When the NFC-based payment system roll-out is completed, NFC phone users in Korea and Japan will be able to make mobile transactions after a simple downloading of a mobile payment application to their phones. Plus, various services – mobile coupons, membership discounts and mobile gift vouchers- already in use in Korean and Japanese markets will also be available via NFC handsets. Customers will be able to seamlessly use the convenient payment service as well as additional mobile services without any service interruptions or geographical limitations… Such an endeavour among the mobile companies in Korea and Japan started from the consensus on the need for a mutually compatible mobile payment market.
The rest of the world will have to “settle” with services like PayPal, OboPay, Square and so on… Though I don’t want to say those are bad services, quite the contrary…
[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]