Can you hear me now?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: April 27, 2006 9:27:08 PM PDT
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>, Dewayne Hendricks  
<dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Can you hear me now?

<http://htdaw.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=318148>


Friday, April 28, 2006 at 12:25 AM EDT
Visa, Nokia start project in Malaysia to turn mobile phones into
electronic wallets

By EILEEN NG Associated Press Writer

(AP) - KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia-Visa International and Finnish
telecommunications company Nokia Corp. jointly released the world's
first credit card payment pilot system in Malaysia, allowing consumers
to shop and pay using their mobile phones.

The "Mobile Visa Wave Payment Pilot" project marks the first step in
plans to turn mobile phones into electronic wallets for consumers,
officials said.

It builds on the Visa Wave smart card technology that uses radio
frequencies to eliminate the need to swipe credit card into a reader.
Customers wave cards in front of the reader to make payments, similar to
"touch and go" cards used in transport systems.

During the four-month trial period, 200 Visa Wave cardholders in
Malaysia will be given a specially designed Nokia phone that can be used
to make payments in 2,500 outlets nationwide that have Visa Wave
readers, officials said.

"It's a natural progression. There are more mobile phones in the world
today than plastic cards. We see this as a good marriage," said Paul
Jung, Visa Asia-Pacific's regional head for emerging products and
technology.

The Visa Wave payment system was introduced last year and there are now
some four million such cards globally, mainly in the United States. This
represents a small fraction of the 1.4 billion Visa brand cards
worldwide.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Visa Wave is available in Malaysia, Taiwan
and South Korea and will be expanded to Japan and Southeast Asia this
year, Jung added.

Nokia's business development senior manager Risto Sipila said there is
vast market potential for such services because mobile phone users
worldwide are expected to surge to 3 billion by 2008, nearly half of the
world's population.

"This new technology won't replace your wallet entirely but it is very
promising because it will make life easier for everyone," he said.

He said the Nokia 3230 prototype phone to be used in the Visa pilot
project is embedded with a chip using the latest cryptography, security
and smart card technologies, making it highly secure and difficult to
counterfeit.

If the trial is successful, the phone could be made available for
commercial use as early as next year, he said, adding that Nokia is also
working on developing more models for such usages.

<http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/04-27-2006/38d1000e50957339.html>



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