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back to article Mobe operators foresee SIM-based contactless payment

Operator alliance GSMA has teamed up with the European Payments Council to work out how mobile payments will work, reaching the shock conclusion that operators are essential in banking. That conclusion emerges from the snappily-titled "Mobile Contactless Payments Service Management Roles Requirements and Specifications", which …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Owned, but by who?

    I looked into this area in some detail a few years ago for a mob telco. Key conclusions were

    - Telco's will never be able to satisfy banking regulators because they haven't got enough cash

    What might work is a partnership between a bank and a telco... but...

    - Banks own their customers, and don't want to be held to ransom by crooked telco's

    - Telco's own their subscribers, and don't want to give crooked banks any leverage

    And nothing much has changed, as far as I can see.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Everything's Changed

      "And nothing much has changed, as far as I can see."

      Tesco Bank

      Tesco Mobile

      Tesco Store

      Simples !

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  2. The Indomitable Gall

    Fork!

    It's a classic fork (in the chess sense, not the source code sense). Use a pocket protector to prevent fraudulent contactless payment snooping and you don't receive incoming calls. Be open to receive incoming calls and have your data exposed.

    If we need contactless tech, it should be possible to shield it when not required.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However...

    You know what would be nice and refreshing? To see that all those big phat happy corporates would bend down and look at offering services the end user would find use for.

    In that respect operators and banks both more or less resemble the recording companies in the sense that you-the-consumer is very much the product, not the customer. You know, provide a channel to conduct the payments through, don't try to own the whole thing. People keep on forgetting that "the internet" is nothing more than a way to ship bits from here to there. Why should my handset be any different? Why do you have to "own" it? *I* paid for it, not you. What have you done for me lately, hm?

    And, oh, pushing technology for the sake of the technology is getting a tad old too. Why not run that one-wire-protocol thing out to the shell so we can have touch plate payments? That would take away a lot of the security concerns voiced by people who don't take the industry's (mouthpiece hack's) word for more than they paid for it.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    As always, in the last 40 years, the Japanese were first.

    NTT DoCoMo has been doing it for 6 years or so. It works because they don't involve the SIM at all, but rather an independent security chip. The chip can even be in a peel-on sticker that you attach the phone's battery lid. See:

    http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2003/122003-ntt_docomo_trials_contactless_pa.htm

    http://www.nttdocomo.com/pr/2004/001196.html

    and

    http://www.billingworld.com/articles/2007/11/changing-the-contactless-payment-mindset.aspx

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    perfect financial track records

    so... how often does your bank make a mistake?

    how often does your moile operator screw up billing?

    really want them involved in a conduit to all your money?

    who I bank with and what I spend my money on is none of their business and until a mobile operator can demonstrate credibility in this area I'm not interested in using them as anything other than the dumb pipe their business practices have made them

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  6. Adam Salisbury
    Grenade

    F**k contactless payment

    How about making chip n' pin secure? How about redesigning VilifiedByVisa and SecrueCrap so they actually provide MORE security than they erode, THEN they can start thinking about contactless payment becuase so far even all form RFID/NFC have been proven easily snoopable, think of the American e-border-type project on the Mexican border and an Oyster-like card for public transit in Boston? You know, the one that when broken saw the feds bury the findings of the whitehats who exploited it?

    Once we're not using any cash at all think of the (ever more) liability the banks will foist upon us.

    If they want this technology in use it should be submitted to whitehats and assorted pen testers before market.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not NFC, but

    the O2 / Natwest thing crashed and burned. O2 People kept on chuntering about the risk of fraud, the card ended up being worthless, just not usable.

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  8. JaitcH
    WTF?

    More like cellco's trying to get into the action

    Essentially these things are similar to Bluetooth, except they involve money. so all of a sudden cellco's get interested in what is a very low range transmission system.

    If they get in, watch the costs rise!

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  9. stucs201
    Thumb Down

    I'm no more interested...

    ...in paying for things with my phone than I am in making a call with my bank card (*).

    If they keep adding irrelevant features to phones like this its only a matter of time before Victorinox enter the handset market.

    (*) Actually the later can sort of be done, but I can't remember the last time I found the need for a pay-phone.

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  10. Tempest
    Pint

    How about Square for some vendors

    See: <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2010-10-22-squareapp22_ST_N.htm?csp=obnetwork >.

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