Vodafone and NFC payments

At last some movement.

Vodafone have decided to launch an NFC payment service on the back of Visa, with Gemalto and Corfire.

It will allow for payments at the Visa Paywave compatible Point of Sales.

I would like to see that you can import cards into the system,  an then select which card you want the phone to use for the payment.

Add in a sprinkle of store loyalty cards, and we’re good to go.

Otherwise we run the risk of having a wide range of apps on our phones, one each for the different cards,  and that is not a nice place.

I guess an important part of the puzzle is maintaining security of the input channel on the mobile phone,  if I am to enter a PIN or similar shared secret then it will need to be shown that there is not a route for hackers to get in and trap your input.  Which is why you see physical keyboards for mobile provided POS terminals.  At some point this will be resolved,  perhaps by having a virtual machine in your phone that is dedicated to the task, and self healing against changes and attacks.

Anyway good to see that these types of cash replacement services are starting to come to light.

Soon coins and cash will be in the museum where they belong.