Visa and the mobile phone

I wish to make a comment on the efforts being made by VISA to allow people to purchase with their phone. If you are Japanese and are used to rocking up to your local vending machine

C-Mode in Japan

and purchasing with your phone, then this is hardly exciting news. Maybe the news is that VISA has struck deals with both Nokia and Google. Nokia – well they are the biggest. But Google and Android. This is interesting. I wish to see Linux on Mobile devices and this is a big pat on the back.

In Japan, the vending machine you see here uses C-Mode (the image is hi res enough to see what it all looks like). Whilst the kids were entertained by the theme park (the park name is on the vending machine) I was, as always, distracted by the hidden technology.

As with my comments on NTT broadband services, again Japan is very advanced in this ‘mobile phone purchasing’ department. Maybe we can play some catch up here too – it feels so strange to tell people what Japan has on offer for the punter, that we are just barely thinking is possible. Maybe I need more than just words to bring some of this technology out of Japan and to us :-)

If you are interested in what this vending machine can do, then just follow the link that I’ve provided via the picture. In Japan there are what are called ‘Wallet phones’. They are i-Mode (or EZweb or SoftBank/Yahoo) mobile phones with a Felica chip inside.

Felica? Well this chip can communicate securely (by a radio nearfield link) with a reader/writer and also with a JAVA application within the mobile phone! Yeah you say? Well with a wallet phone one can use it as a train ticket, cinema ticket, for electronic cash payment, point reward card, membership card, and yes – for credit card payments amongst other things. Ah, yes my point exactly, how far behind are we :-)