The prepaid market in Europe is huge, with countries like Italy and Spain seeing a majority of wireless customers opting to forgo contracts altogether and instead recharge their SIM card whenever they see fit. The actual process of putting credit on your SIM varies from country to country, but one thing in common across all markets is that you need to hit keys, whether they be physical or virtual, to get more texts, talk time, and data. In Finland you can walk up to any ATM, known as an Otto, and top up, but it wasn’t always like that. Before you had to go to an operator’s shop and purchase cards that had a code you had to scratch to reveal and then send said code via SMS to a special number for the credit to appear on your account. There’s got to be a simpler way, right?
Swiss operator Swisscom began a trial in the city of Bern in October 2010 with near field communication (NFC) enabled top up points. Customers who had an NFC enabled device could simply walk up to a machine, wave their device in front of a reader, and then put as much cash as they wanted to on their SIM. Those who don’t have an NFC enabled phone could get a sticker that enables the exact same functionality. With fewer people bugging the store clerks to top up their devices, they could now better serve customers who have more pressing issues. The fact that customers don’t have to enter their own phone number or a silly random string of digits also reduces human error. There’s nothing worse than putting 40 Euros worth of credit on another account because you mistyped your own phone number.
What other new uses of NFC do you see coming in the future?