O2 wallet visa cards have just finished up with a successful test of ‘near field communications’. It's the technology preferred in Visa Pay wave cards or Oyster cards, cards that let you into your block of flats, and all sorts of things. A similar sort of thing to the Barclaycard One Pulse card, but they want to put it into your phone so you don't have to carry around a physical card.
Technology used
Well, O2 wallets have gave 500 people a Nokia 6131 with the technology inside and asked them to use it exclusively for six months.
The results are pretty positive - 78% wanted to carry on using it in the future and 9/10 were happy with how the technology worked. With concern regarding the replacement being done to Oyster cards, people still loved it. 89% of the participants wanted to carry on using it, and 87% said it would influence their purchasing decision if the functionality were only available on a limited range of handsets for business use. One in five of them even said that they lessen the number of journeys they took on public transport due to the technology.
People were less keen on the contact less payments functionality. Only 47% of people felt it was better than using cash, which I suspect might be due to the limited availability of places that you can pay using this method. For instance Mc Donald’s and Crispy Creme donuts very well famous, but if you can't use it in your corner shop then the functionality is worth useful.
O2 are currently working with Nokia on the project, and they were talking to other manufacturers about same, but wouldn't name any names. In the long term courses they want to get all carriers, all handset manufacturers, and all major banks and retailers on board. An ambitious goal can be achieve, but the prize will be worth it if they can stretch it off.
