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Whipping out your mobile phone to pay for a sandwich at lunchtime could soon become a reality. The global trade body for the mobile industry and a European monetary organisation have signed a pact to speed up the deployment of handset payment services in Europe.
The GSM Association (GSMA) and the European Payments Council (EPC), which represents 8000 banks in the EU, will now jointly co-ordinate efforts to get phones paying for just about everything, from impulse purchases in shops to restaurant meals.
UICC is a smartcard used in mobile terminals in GSM and UMTS networks to allow them to communicate securely with the banks. NFC devices can be built directly into mobile phones to allow short-range wireless communications between, say, a mobile phone and reader, much like the Oyster card system used on the London Underground.
Originally posted by burdman30ott6
Makes me think about the whole mark of the beast thing, actually. Cell phones are rapidly becoming imbedded even in impoverished nations. They already can track us through most of them. I wouldn't doubt that some tech firm somewhere is working on a chip for every cell phone that contains all of a person's unique information, which someday will almost certainly include some form of national database information unique to each phone. And now you can use your phone to conduct transactions at the point of sale? "None shall buy or sell lest they possess the mark of the beast." Scares the hell out of me as I sit here staring at my Motorola Razr sitting on my desk next to my PC.
Originally posted by d11_m_na_c05
To vox2442
Thanks for the firsthand account of the tech . In your honest opinion . Do you think this is a good thing ? Or too much faith put in a single device?