After becoming your digital camera, diary and Internet browser of choice, mobile phones could soon take the place of your cash and credit cards too. In fact, the ubiquitous mobile phone could make the wallets obsolete in a few years just as your wrist watch has been reduced to being a mere fashion statement.
Nokia, the world’s biggest handset maker, and a number of telecom service providers have thrashed out a global initiative to turn mobile phones into wallets. A number of large Asian and European carriers such as KPN, Maxis Communications, Mobilkom Austria, O2, Orange, SFR, SingTel, SKT, and Wind are part of the 14-member body that had initiated the project several months ago.
Nokia, along with rival phone makers Samsung and LG Electronics of Korea have said they will embed a wireless chip into their phones soon.
The world’s biggest payment card company, MasterCard, is also involved in the initiative, which is cheaper and much faster than other wireless payment experiments, like those using SMS messages. China Mobile, Vodafone, Cingular – all owned by AT&T and BellSouth — and Telefonica already support the common wireless chip format on the mobile phones they distribute for their networks
Source: The Times of India
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