Mobile wallet, or maybe more!

Would you like it if one day, you forget to bring your wallet, yet you can still pay for your bus ride or buy a drink from a vending machine? Or you forgot to bring your staff pass, yet you can still enter your office building. When you finally got home, you can open your house doors despite having left the keys home too.

All these and more are enabled by a new technology called mobile wallet. Mobile wallet is mobile phone that has functionality to supplant a conventional wallet and more. Unlike mobile commerce, mobile wallet is a much more versatile application that includes elements of mobile transactions, as well as other items one may find in a wallet, such as membership cards, loyalty cards and travel cards. It also stores personal and sensitive information like passport, credit card information, PIN codes, online shopping accounts, booking details and insurance policies that can be encrypted or password-protected. The technology aims to reduce the number items people will need to carry around.

With mobile wallet, the user can use their mobile phone to pay transactions at merchants that accept mobile payments. To do this, the user just needs to upload digital cash from a credit card to their mobile phone and swipe their mobile phone at payment counters. They can also swipe their mobile phone at ticketing machines. Mobile wallet can be used as a virtual train ticket where customers just wave their mobile phone across the checkout stations instead of using separate swipe cards. Another use is as an identifier to log on to a computer at Internet kiosks. The data is exchanged by mere proximity, without the need for physical contact. Users who use the same mobile wallet applications can also exchange data with one another, example bank account numbers when they need to perform bank transfers among one another. There are several technologies that could enable mobile wallet operations of handsets, including Near Field Communications (NFC), Radio Frequency (RFID), bar codes, and visual recognition.

According to InStat, a high-tech market research firm, as many as 25 million wireless phone subscribers in North America could be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011. One of the first carriers to launch mobile wallet is NTT Docomo that uses its Felica system to allow those who carry compatible 3G handsets like Fujitsu’s F900iC and other models by NEC, Panasonic, Sharp, Mitsubishi and Sony Ericsson to make payments using their handsets. A credit card-sized Sony smart card powers the system. It holds a chip which can be loaded with personal data.

With a subscription, the wallet phones work by sending data at high speeds and securely over the DoCoMo network. Special readers can also be built into cash machines and cash registers to recognise the transactions. The handsets have built-in security to stop others using the service by using password protection or fingerprint scanning.

In South Korea, SK Telecom has started a mobile wallet service called Moneta. Even in the Philipines, a service known as G-Cash allows the transfer of money via text messages (SMS). This service enables users to send money from mobile to mobile, buy goods and services and pay for business permits and micro loans and won an award at the GSM Association Awards 2005 in Cannes.

Innovations in mobile payment could also benefit people developing content for internet websites. It would be possible to charge small payments on the website using your mobile phone. Even PayPal has joined in the foray by introducing the ability to make payments or to send money to others by sending SMS. All you need is to activate your account using your phone number and you can text a message when you see something you are interested in. Every order will be followed by a Mobile PIN as an added layer of security. Hey, you can even donate money using PayPal’s mobile wallet.

While there is widespread enthusiasm about mobile wallet technology, there are fears of security breaches and identity theft. Having all your personal and sensitive information stored on a phone poses a big risk. Incidents of people having their mobile phone stolen will lead to more loss in personal information like bank accounts and passport numbers. However, it would be great if the day will come when we can leave home without our wallet, credit card, passport, membership cards and keys. There would be a lot of empty space in wallets and handbags.

Source: http://www.mobileworld.com.my

Making no waves

This article makes me smile =)
Have a good day!

Cher Linn

ATHLETES in the ancient Olympics competed in the buff, on the grounds (among other things) that clothes were a hindrance to performance. Modern technology, however, has changed that. In some sports, notably swimming, the right costume can be an enormous boon. Take Speedo's LZR swimsuit, which was introduced in February. Fully 38 of the 42 world swimming records that have been broken since then have fallen to swimmers wearing LZRs. Indeed, some of those records have been claimed by less-than-notable racers, suggesting that the difference lies in the apparel, not the athlete.

To make the LZR four innovations had to come together. The first is the fabric. The new suit is cut from a densely woven nylon-elastane material that compresses the wearer's body into a hydrodynamic shape but is extremely light. Moreover, there are no sewn seams. Instead, the suit is bonded together using ultrasonic welding. Seams act as speed bumps in the water. Ultrasonic welding removes 6% of the drag that would otherwise occur, according to Jason Rance, the head of Aqualab, Speedo's research-and-development centre in Nottingham in Britain. Compared with Speedo's previous suit, which was used by numerous gold medallists in the 2004 Olympic Games, the new material has half the weight yet triple the power to compress the body.

Second, the suit has what Speedo calls an “internal core stabiliser”—like a corset that holds the swimmer's form. As a swimmer tires, his hips hang lower in the water, creating drag. By compressing his torso, the LZR not only lets him go faster, because it maintains a tubular shape, but also allows him to swim longer with less effort. In tests, swimmers wearing the LZR consumed 5% less oxygen for a given level of performance than those wearing normal swimsuits did.

Third, as a further drag-reduction measure, polyurethane panels have been placed in spots on the suit. This reduces drag by another 24% compared with the previous Speedo model. Fourth, the LZR was designed using a three-dimensional pattern rather than a two-dimensional one. It thus hugs a swimmer's body like a second skin; indeed, when it is not being worn, it does not lie flat but has a shape to it.

The results are a suit that costs $600 and takes 20 minutes to squeeze into, and a widespread belief among swimmers competing in the Beijing Olympics this summer that they will have to wear one or fail. The director of the American team, Mark Schubert, for example, thinks the LZR improves performance by as much as 2%—a huge leap considering that tenths of a second may mark the difference between first and fourth place. Arena, a rival swimsuit-maker, called the situation “unprecedented” and, initially, lobbied for a review of the garment rules in an open letter to the sport's governing body, FINA (the Fédération Internationale de Natation). Another maker, Tyr, has launched another type of suit altogether. It is suing Speedo's parent company, Warnaco Swimwear, Mr Schubert (for more or less insisting that members of his team wear the LZR) and others on antitrust grounds. The LZR is thus being referred to by some people as high-tech doping on a hanger.

Speedo's success is partly due to a subtle rule “clarification” made by FINA in April which confirms that polyurethane areas can be incorporated into racing swimsuits. Other manufacturers complain it is unfair that a revision with sweeping implications took place only a few months before the Olympics. Still, they are rushing to bring forward rival products. On June 4th FINA approved new suits by Arena, Adidas and Mizuno, so Speedo's technological lead may not last. In technology as in sport, records are simply there to be broken.

Source: The Economist 11th June 2008