The mobile industry has been WOEFULLY inept at dealing with mobile commerce. Appalling. There’s a heck of a lot of hesitation going on.
Only a few years ago, some mobile operators were doing their best to avoid getting anywhere near mobile commerce. Now, as revenue plateaus and the data market is moving swiftly to flat rate — without any innovation — attention is most certainly turning to other ways of making money.
Want to wave your phone at the newsagent to pay for your newspaper?
Dream on. It’s going to take a 500lb behemoth of a gorilla to step in and sort out the industry.
As it happens, we have that — in the form of First Data, one of the world’s largest merchant account processors.
They’ve come up with a solution that could, theoretically, be adopted tomorrow. It’s called GO-Tag. It’s a little sticker that you can put anywhere (think: Back of your mobile phone?) and you can use it much like an Oyster card (the RFID card system used for the London Underground train service). Swipe at a reader and the relevant balance is debited from your account. That could be your mobile phone account. Or bank account, or Starbucks Coffee account. It wouldn’t take much of an imagination stretch for the likes of Vodafone to issue all its contract customers with a little GO-Tag each. Put it on your phone, your coffee mug, your forehead… any time you use it, transactions are debited from your Vodafone account.
THAT would be excellent.
First Data have published a white paper about this — Contactless Payments: Consumer Trends and Usage Preferences (PDF). If you’re anywhere into Near Field Communications, this is worth a look. More about their GO-Tags here (PDF).
Joshua on 
Interesting but …. how secure is the system? Can it be suject to electronic raids when thieves charge your go tag while standing next to you? How about personal safety/security? Will it have limit on the amount you spend? Will it make one a target for thieves?
Posted by nacho on August 21st, 2008 at 5:19 pm.These are all rather pertinent questions Ignacio! I'm not sure on the
Posted by smstextnews on August 21st, 2008 at 6:59 pm.answers — generally speaking I think they'd be for small transactions only
– up to, say, £2.
Cheers, didn't mean to sound all technophobe as I'm all for making life easier and hate carrying cash!
I just wish I could buy my morning caffeine fix or train ticket or pay for parking with my mobile.
If only these companies could reassure us how they'd protect our privacy/personal info/bank account…
Posted by nacho on August 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 am.Have some experience in this and believe this will be the way forward for GO-Tag until full NFC arrives. No details or funds stored on these Go-Tags so don't think security will be a major issue while the bugs are fixed for full NFC around 2010!!
Posted by bruce s on September 2nd, 2008 at 3:07 am.Tell us more, Bruce!
2008/9/2 Disqus <>
Posted by smstextnews on September 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 am.