Pay by Cell Phone w/ “Wireless Wallet”
Wireless Wallet could make your credit card hands-free…
Cellular South, in Jackson, MS, the nation’s largest privately held wireless provider, joining with USA Technologies in Malvern, PA, announced a two-city consumer trial of its ground-breaking Wireless Wallet service that will allow consumers to make payments from their cell phone. Seventy-five cell phone customers of the provider will have the ability to pay for purchases by passing their cell phones in front of an electronic reader during the trial.
Using a prototype Kyocera handset that is not available to the general public, the test will take place with the help of more than a dozen retailers at 50 locations in Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi. Using near-field communications (NFC) technology, the Wireless Wallet acts as a digital credit card that allows Cellular South customers to make purchases by simply tapping it against a special reader in merchant stores, which then sends information from the cell phone directly to the merchant.
Cellular South is offering the first mobile wallet trial in the country that engages multiple retailers within a community. The trial will run through August 2007 with the service scheduled to be operational on a wider basis in 2008. “Whether it’s paying for the dry cleaning or purchasing lunch at the nearest cafe, we’re helping to make mobile payment technology a reality,” said Dave Carey, vice president of strategic planning at Kyocera.
Cellular South has also partnered with ViVOtech, the leading software provider of 3rd Generation Payment Systems, to provide the software that resides in the handset. According to Michael Mullagh, chief executive officer, ViVOtech, “Cell phones are the next frontier for contactless payments, and Cellular South is playing a major role by initiating this trial. Using our technology, Cellular South customers will soon be able to pay for goods and services without having to pull their credit card out of their wallet. ViVOtech makes it easy to download credit card information into NFC-enabled cell phones and to make payments by simply tapping the phone against an NFC-based wireless reader.”
