Mobile Payment Technology Being Developed in the UK

By Joy Santos on Jul 6, 2011 in Business, Cellphone, Europe, Technology, World • No comments

T-Mobile and Orange, which are now part of Everything Everywhere after merging last year, are collaborating with Vodafone and O2 to develop a “wave and pay” system on network handsets.

According to TheSalesPro of the UK on Wednesday, June 29, T-Mobile UK and Orange UK are joining forces with two more of the UK’s largest mobile phone operators to develop a mobile handset payment technology.

This type of “wave and pay” technology transforms mobile phones of subscribers of participating networks into mobile virtual wallets.

The “wave and pay” technology is called Near-Field Communication (NFC), and is quite popular in countries such as Japan and South Korea. In the United States, residents of Austin, Texas hope to experience NFC-driven mobile commerce in early 2012.

With NFC, people will pay for goods and services by placing their mobile phones near a reader.

According to Everything Everywhere chief executive Tom Alexander, the new system would enable consumers to “manage their money and make payments using their handsets, helping advertisers reach their customers on the move, and helping banks provide their clients with an easy and convenient way of making payments.”

The NFC service will be available to various businesses such as banks, retail and ticketing companies, as well as different mobile operators in early 2012, according to Everything Everywhere, Vodafone, and O2. This is supported by the significant investments poured into the collaborative project by the major mobile phone operators of the UK.

NFC payments are expected to account for an estimated $367 billion of the $1.1 trillion global market for mobile phone payments by 2014, according to IE Market Research.