January 26, 2009
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News: Cellular CCs Everywhere; Why Not Us?
Apparently, innovation isn't stifled by high taxes (as some say); it's stifled by greed. Thus, reports the New York Times. Cell phone credit cards aren't new at all, any more. They're so common in Japan now, they're just considered ‘typical'. Yet, the American culture has yet to discover the flourishing cell phone credit card market that is abroad. The reason given…the American credit card industry is too embroiled in the ‘greed war' of "who's gonna get the biggest piece of the pie."
In Japan, London and many other innovative foreign shopping markets, consumers need only ‘wave' their cell phones to make credit card purchases of almost any nature. Sound dangerous? Well, the facts show that it's not. In London, England the popular "Oyster" system provides credit cards for transportation that use the same technology as Japanese do with cell phones. They call it "Near Field Communication (NFC)" and it works off the came short- range technology. Of course, the US has had the technology as long as anywhere else.
Some time ago the US finally breached the point beyond having to physically swipe credit cards to make purchases. In fact, our consumers have been enjoying the convenience of ‘toll-pass' for years now, found at many toll booth interchanges across our country. We also have many metro-cities like New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, which have implemented their own proven and successful programs with this technology. Pioneering credit card technology for the general public, MasterCard has recently introduced a first-step ‘new-to-US' concept called ‘PayPass'. With ‘PayPass', consumers only need to wave their wallets (MasterCards inside, of course) past a scanner at the register to place a purchase. Dangerous, no. Safer. The card is never exposed to the public.
Because of red tape and corporate greed though, this technology has not become widespread in the US. The big restriction now is the limitation of this only working MasterCard's new line of credit cards. Using cell phones instead, several different types of cards could be programmed in, as it is in Japan. The technology has already been proven safer than physically presenting a card to a convenience store clerk. Experts call it "Safe".