On 3 Aug, 16:43, "tim....." wrote:
"Roland Perry" wrote:

(snip)

I'm still struggling to understand why this is so much better than having
the same chip in a bit of plastic in your wallet (I go out without a phone
more often than without a wallet) and thread convergence if you are
using a Railcard, you need to be carrying your wallet anyway!

Because it's a solution looking for a problem. The mobile
phone companies are always looking at ways of making
extra money and this "(not so) micro payment using your
phone" is the next idea that they are trying to sell.

It seems that they have managed to sell the idea to a rail
company to help them market it.

But ISTM that none of the previous attempts to sell
electronic micro payments have been accepted by the
population, it will surprise me if this one is any different.

tim

I'm also a sceptic (see my other posts on this thread) but there is a
whole new wave (excuse the pun) of micro-payments on the way... the
Barclaycard OnePulse card, to be launched this september in London,
will include wave-and-pay RFID technology for purchases under £10, as
well as Oyster card capability (the balance held in the virtual Oyster
purse will be separate from the wave-and-pay system).

Incidentally wave-and-pay would appear to be the generic term -
Visa calls it "Visa payWave":
(http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/paywave/index.html)
and Barclays appear to call the technology "OneTouch".

The ThriftyScot article (first link below) says that the Royal Bank of
Scotland (owners of NatWest) and American Express plan cards using
this technology.

What will be interesting is how many retailers will have point-of-sale
machines that will be wave-and-pay capable. One part of me thinks that
many POS systems will be pretty new, given the recent shift over to
Chip and PIN cards - but that said perhaps many of these systems were
designed with expansion in mind.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that wave-and-pay will
gradually blossom and be a success (though I think I'll stick to cash,
I don't want my bank knowing all my movements and small purchases I
make!).

I'm more sceptical about wave-and-pay/RFID embedded into mobiles
though - a mobile is far more bulky that a card, it's less tolerant of
being dropped and it's more susceptible to being nicked

-----
For more on the Barclays OnePulse card see
http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/Finance...edit-card.html
http://www.newsroom.barclays.co.uk/C...6&NewsAreaID=2
https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/barcla...istration.html