Paying With the Wave of a Cellphone 137
holy_calamity writes "Tech Review discusses how it will soon be possible to pay in stores by waving your cellphone over a contactless reader, thanks to new handsets due next year, and RFID stickers and cases offered today by firms including Visa. It's convenient for shoppers, but a major driver of the technology is the opportunity for retailers to gain access to their customers' cellphones and social networks for marketing purposes."
Old people already use that in Japan (Score:1, Insightful)
Welcome to the party, round-eyes.
Edy prepaid or iD credit, the Japanese have had this for years.
Re:Old people already use that in Japan (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much this. NFC payment via phones has been one of the main reasons why western style smartphones like iphone have been a complete and utter failure in Japan. If you can't even do basic things like pay for your train ticket with a smartphone, then what good is the smart part?
Imagine an iphone that you couldn't send or receive text messages with. Would you buy it? NFC payments are so widespread there that it's in the same general category in Japan.
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Re:Old people already use that in Japan (Score:4, Informative)
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third to half wouldn't fit with sales numbers, nor any other information coming out of japan.
nfc needs banks and institutions like metro systems to participate for it to be worthwhile, the techs been out there for so long. that is the 'figuring' out part, to just make it work. the close collaboration with tech manufacturers that the japanese telcoms do helps with this.
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I'm surprised this story is even news, I've had an RFID sticker on my phone for some time now. It is pre-paid and I can opt to receive a text message whenever I use it, so if it's used without authorization I would know immediately: PingPing [pingping.be]
There are also other ways [proximus.be] I can pay with my cellphone.
-- Pete.
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The pingping project is mostly Belgacom-backed, though; and while there are other businesses, the trial seems to be limited mostly to parkings and Belgacom buildings, from what I see.
Given that I left the group four years ago, I suspect they won't welcome me with open arms if I try to grab lunch in the mess hall. Not that I have much desire to, mind you :-)
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I left the group almost 6 years ago, and they hired me back as a freelance contractor nearly 4 years ago. The trial extends to shops and businesses in the area around the towers. Pomodoro [pommodoro.be] allows payment via PingPing for example. But yes - the trials are centred around Belgacom staff at the moment.
-- Pete.
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"If you can't even do basic things like pay for your train ticket with a smartphone,"
I live in old Europe but I have been paying parking fees, train and bus tickets for years with my phone.
For the trains and buses the phone even _is_ the ticket, just an SMS that you show to the train/bus guy.
And I initiate the payment by sending a single letter as SMS message, completely under my control.
Not just Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
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Imagine an iphone that you couldn't send or receive text messages with.
You mean an iPod Touch?
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No, I mean an iphone. Specifically and iPHONE with the ability to make and receive calls.
Don't be an asshat.
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and in Korea. It's a surprise the iPhone has been so popular here with all the things it lacks that Koreans were crazy over, like Tmoney (the payment method), DMB receiver for TV, free english/korean dictionaries, etc.
Though given that tmoney is nothing more than a thin wire in a card or dongle, it would be trivial to mount one of these in an iPhone bumper case to duplicate it.
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that's just it in America the cell companies won't do anything they can't get 50-75% of the revenue from.
I would love an FM reciever. AT&T has one model phone available with an FM receiver. they have crippled said phone with their own software that can't be removed and six months later it is running a year old OS.( android 2.1) with zero upgrade plans ever. So the first thing one has to do is root the phone to uninstall their software, upgrade the phone to the latest, and then to be secure re lock the
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Strange, RFID cards have been in use for ages (even out university cafeteria used them back in the 90's). They're usually tied to a prepaid account, limiting the risk in case of theft/misuse.
What's so special about unifying the whole thing and placing the chip inside a cell phone instead of a separate card?
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Strange, because in Japan credit cards are practically useless. You have to go to the post office to even find an ATM, and retailers only accept cash.
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Re:Old people already use that in Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
Not A Chance In Hell
Geez...I don't want identifying RFID's on my tires, clothes, credit cards or passports, why the fsck would I want them for my phone and to actively contribute to corporations data stores on me and my habits?
I still prefer good old cash for most transactions.
Hear, hear: Not A Chance In Hell (Score:2)
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I don't want anything personally identifying information on my passport that can easily be read by anyone with enough electronic gear in the area.
First call (Score:2)
yah, that couldn't be abused by anyone.
Re:First call (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually do want RFID capability in my phone. But only if that means I can have a built-in RFID Guardian [rfidguardian.org].
But giving retailers access to all my contacts? Why the hell would I want to do that?
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When he's smart enough to jailbreak it.
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And do a lot of programming. For instance, I cannot remove those stupid facebook, twitter, etc "features" from my N900 because they are in the basic part of it. I am not sure if I even could remove them with a half year dedicated study of the OS and development documentation.
Might I suggest a new field of employment?
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Funny, my boss has N900 and he doesn't even have twitter account. He did finally join Facebook a while ago, but as far as I know, didn't configure it for the phone. Skype he did configure, but even with that he initially thought that he would need to install something until he found it in the configuration options.
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And desperate enough to void the warranty.
And gullible enough to risk having the vendor brick his device on purpose.
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When he chooses which phone to buy, that's when.
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Right. What could possibly go wrong? I do not want RFID chips associated with my credit card. I'm happy with the '60s-'70s tech magnetic strip which can still be cloned but not just by walking by someone with an RFID scanner.
Let's just implant RFID chips in our hands (Score:2)
Re:Let's just implant RFID chips in our hands (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm [bbc.co.uk]
The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks.
This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.
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But that wouldn't generate publicity on the BBC website, would it?
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But then you can't pretend to be a Jedi by waving your hand and saying "I have paid for my drink".
Mark of the beast! (Score:4, Interesting)
[13:16] And it maketh all, the small, and the great, and the rich, and the poor, and the freemen, and the servants, that it may give to them a mark upon their right hand or upon their foreheads, [13:17] and that no one may be able to buy, or to sell, except he who is having the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. --Revelations 13:16-17, New Testament (Young's Literal Translation) [bible.cc]
I know it's against Slashdot protocol and all to cite religious texts, but if this isn't the prophecy from the Book of Revelation coming true, I don't know what is. I don't know about the rest of you, but the first time they try to inject that thing into my hand, I'm going to cite this religion text and state boldly and unwaveringly that it is against my religion to have an RFID implant. Posted AC because the mere mention of religion here without bashing it poses great risk to karma.
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Personally I don't see the point of just having a dumb RFID chip in me, I'd rather have some smarter tech with some kind of user interface (preferably something a bit more "Ghost in the shell" and not just a keyboard implanted in one wrist and a monitor in the other).
As for religious objections, you're free not to get cyberized (to use a word from GitS) and although I may find your reason for it silly I would probably also refuse simply getting a "dumb" implant that does little more than act as a glorified
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As for religious objections, you're free not to get cyberized (to use a word from GitS) and although I may find your reason for it silly I would probably also refuse simply getting a "dumb" implant that does little more than act as a glorified ID card.
Please reply to what the GP actually posted. Their bible quote points out that eventually *everyone* will have to have the "mark" to do transactions. There eventually will be no opting out. You're better off not replying if you aren't going to read what the person whote that you are replying directly to.
Re:Mark of the beast! (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds to me that you're implying that the bible quote is somehow an accurate prediction of the future. I'm having a bit of trouble believing in that. Even if it becomes extremely common (which I doubt).
Also, it's a quote from a collection of fairy tales several thousand years old, hardly an accurate prediction of technological progress or world events.
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Exactly. The "mark" fear is based on the idea that a lot of Romans of non-proper birth were locked out of markets and opportunity. It was John's way of saying "Hey, they'll do this to all of us! Down with the Emperor! Christ will come in our lifetime, shut down the Emperor and save us."
Didn't exactly come to pass, but like Nostradamous or whomever, the emotionally unbalanced and credulous hold up these writings as accurate and simply reinterpret everything to fit modern history. When I was a kid Revelation
Re:Mark of the beast! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume Bible to be inerrant. Let's also assume that this particular quote was meant as a prediction of future events thousands of years away; there's a pretty strong argument that the whole Book of Revelation was written as a thinly-disguised "fuck you" to the Roman Empire, who had a habit of putting their rulers portraits on their money (so you'd have to take the "image of the beast" into your hand to conduct transactions) and requiring worship of said rulers, and had a ruler (Nero) who had just died but was rumored to be alive and about to return, was commonly considered a beast, and who's name can be read as "666" by a common numerological method of the time, but let's ignore all that.
Even with these assumptions, your argument is illogical. There is no reason to assume that RFID tags really are the fulfilment of a particular prophecy, just because they could be. You certainly can't assume that they are, then use that to "disprove" any counterarguments, for that is begging the question. The GP pointed out that RFID tags seem unlikely to go the way the Mark of the Beast is supposed to; that's evidence that RFID tags are not, in fact, Mark of the Beast, not that they are MotB and a miracle will enforce all the conditionals.
This is why religious arguments usually get modded down: even if you assume that said religion is correct, the arguments themselves tend to be one logical fallacy on top of another, and often completely incoherent.
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Or we could say it already happened, if we take the "mark" to be credit. To participate in modern society, one has to have a credit history. It's very difficult to live a cash-only life - things like buying
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Leviticus 25:35 'If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36 Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. 37 You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit.'
Skip forward a bit and a lot of Jesus' teachings revolve around debt (because it was universal concepts).
I doubt that financial debt was "the beast" since it's been a part of human interactions since trading was invented.
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By any chance could you stipulate that in your head is just the same as on your head?
You're already numbered, my friend.
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Then you know some crazy people.
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Then you also know some people that do not claim there child as a dependent on there tax return.
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I didn't get mine till some time in like 9th grade..and my whole typing class signed up for SSN.
Kinda wish I'd have known then what I know now...and never have signed up for that fucker...
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Why is it against your religion to comply to a prophecy of one of its main prophets? Finally there is a way to prove even some of the stuff is true and you're obstructing it by refusing to give in.
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Except, you know, context. The whole book was little more than a thinly veiled attack on the Roman authorities. John was very much an anti-establishment character. He was especially critical of the worship of the Emperor as a deity. Not to mention John, like most early Christians, expected all this to happen in his lifetime.
>but the first time they try to inject that thing into my hand
The same "they" that make you carry a cellphone? The same "they" that make you use facebook? If anything you'll be clamor
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This wasn't a ground breaking prophecy back then, the Romans subjected the Jews to trade restrictions (citation missing) it was only extrapolation that the devil would extend that to all nations.
Re:Mark of the beast! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)
Like losing your cellphone wasn't bad enough so far?
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Worst case, you'll lose between £10 and £15. This is because transactions have two limits, a maximum cumulative amount and a maximum purchase amount.
If someone steals your phone, then they'll be able to make a couple of low value payments. However as soon as they make a payment which is over the purchase amount or they make a number of low value payments and the next one will take them over the cumulative account, then they will need to validat
Mobile banking (Score:2, Insightful)
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How many transactions will I be doing from my pocket on a crowded subway?
I don't know but with any luck you will be paying for my porn site subscription and enough credit to download the videos on my anonymous PAYG phone. I might have enough credit left to call uncle Osama too. I don't know which will be worse, explaining to your wife about the porn or to the police about the calls to suspicious people in Afghanistan.
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That depends on how many crooks are out skimming credit card numbers that day.
Eventually, it'll be so easy that when you get scammed your best bet is to go skim some numbers and pay off the bill. It can be the next big bubble! The transactions can just swirl round and round.
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How many transactions my phone will be making from my pocket on a crowded subway?
There, fixed that for you.
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I would hope that the user can control that. Personally I think I would prefer to have to explicitly authorize every single transaction.
I think it could be done conveniently though. Either by having the user up an app real quick to enable the RFID chip, or by prompting for a PIN whenever a transaction is attempted.
and... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the blackhat standing by the exit door with a 50$ RFID-reader gets my account as well.
They're gonna need some very hefty security measures to get me on that bandwagon, thankyouverymuch!
"but a major driver of the technology is the opportunity for retailers to gain access to their customers' cellphones and social networks for marketing purposes."
Is NOT helping in convincing me.
I don't want a facebook/twitter update of what I bought and where, every time I shop.
Re:and... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the blackhat standing by the exit door with a 50$ RFID-reader gets my account as well.
I work at a company who works on the cellphone side of the thing. It's been part of the specs since the first drafts that transfers require a manual validation (press a button) to occur. Did you really think you were the first to think of that.
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Of course not, but that hasn't exactly stopped visa cards and U.S. passports from plowing ahead. We're all too painfully aware that cell providers just love to turn good phones into crap.
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Oh, I'm certain I'm not the first to think of that, but if the Windows security model has taught me anything, it's that people will blindly click anything to get to the goodies (in this case phonecall/Angry Birds/txtservice) underneath, and I believe that this will extend to smart-phones as well.
Putting a PIN on there might help a little, but the whole RFID still strikes me as just a bit too immature to trust it with financial transactions just yet.
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if the Windows security model has taught me anything, it's that people will blindly click anything to get to the goodies
Yeah, I think that is the single greatest weakness at this point.
The phones might be smart, but there is no guarantee that the user is.
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Or you just put in an activation button, or put a password on each transaction, or put a password on certain transactions (to short time between, or too large amount, or in the wrong GPS area or whatever you can think off).
Personally I agree though that if you make it too convenient to use it will be easy to attack. So you have to make it less convenient to use (need to hold button on phone while swiping and need to type password if amount is over 20 USD etc.) and then suddenly you have a system that is onl
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The security problem is easy: How about your phone just asks you whether you accept the charges, and you click "Yes". Of course there will always be fraud wherever there's money, but such a confirmation system seems much more secure than existing US-style credit cards.
And you should have more faith in humanity that FB updates won't automatically go out whenever you buy something. We've learned that's a bad idea. But maybe people can choose specific purchases to publicize... like if you buy concert ticket
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"I don't want a facebook/twitter update of what I bought and where, every time I shop."
Strangely enough, I know enough people who do this by themselves. A Cousin of mine can't even stop for gas without posting about it on his facebook page along with a few cell phone pictures of his car, the station and surrounding area. It's ridiculous what kind of information people will willingly give up for the sake of social networking novelty.
Re:and... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's ridiculous what kind of information people will willingly give up for the sake of social networking novelty.
Personally I find the narcissism of social networking *far* more ridiculous than the "giving up information part".
Though I imagine the two are linked - "I know I'm not important enough for anyone to give a shit about me, but maybe if I tell the whole world everything I do, I can pretend they all want to know, and the conclude that I'm actually giving something up by broadcasting everything from what's on TV to the consistency of my stool".
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Japan has had this payment method for almost everything for years, I wonder how they handle security?
Über encryption of your transaction info in all smartphones and used women's underwear vending machines (I'm not kidding, they really do have those in Japan)?
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But you should. And update when you go out of town too.
Why a cellphone? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Mine too (a debit card in my case), although you'll probably find that it's a contactless smart card [wikipedia.org], not RFID.
I would get rid of it entirely, but it's my ATM card as well so I kinda need it.
I'm thinking about moving to another bank. Bank of Scotland have done nothing but piss me off recently.
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I would get rid of it entirely, but it's my ATM card as well so I kinda need it."
It isn't a problem at all. My bank tried sending me those too...not only that, they changed it to a combination ATM/Debit card.
I called them up and stated I did not want a Debit card...only ATM, and I absolutely did NOT want a RFID or contactless smart card, I just wanted a simple, old fashioned ATM card.
They we
Dreaming. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Part of it being they seem pointless.
The range is so short and the delay so long with contactless that it's faster to just swipe the card than to tap it for me.
It already exists (Score:1)
Re:It already exists (Score:4, Insightful)
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Store loyalty cards... (Score:3, Funny)
are also "a benefit" to the customer, in terms of discounts. But again, your giving your data to the shop and anyone else they pass it to.
I don't use loyalty cards, I won't use this. If they want my data, let them break the law to get it, just like the government does.
Stick money to your phone? (Score:1)
If RFID chip is on sticker why put it on mobile phone? You could just have small card in your wallet.
> "People typically have their phone much closer to hand, so I think they are more ready to pay,"
> he explains. "For example, many women put their cards at the bottom of their purse for security,
> but keep their phone at the very top for easy access."
Won't they start to put phone at the bottom of the bag for security?
And what if someone device looking like anti-theft gate, which in fact deducts mone
Why RFID? (Score:1)
Cellphones already support wifi, bluetooth etc., why not simply combined WiFi and paypal, into a smartphone-app to pay for things? (assuming you don't hate paypal)
If a store wants to support cellphone purchasing, they don't need new RFID scanners and service fees, they just need a wireless router, and a corresponding app to handle the smartphone-app's transnational messages. ( patent pending ;P )
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I guess that you would not want to be able to "wave" a payment over 100 meters, but only on close proximity scanners. Anyway, they need to implement this really well to prevent fraud. Waht could possibly go wrong? :)
Look on the plus side (Score:2)
"This isn't the Android you are looking for"
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Don't be ridiculous. I will wait until the apple store offers to duct tape it on for me for $50. They will use special apple duct tape that is SO much better than ordinary plebeian duct tape.
Can I hack the store display? (Score:2)
Not to mention (Score:1)
what (Score:2, Interesting)
American Express has this in some of their cards (Score:1)
1) They are so keen to promote their RFID system that it uses that system's name as the description of the transaction in your statement. To see what merchant you actually transacted with you have to drill down in that statement entry every single time. Not only is this a PITA but it may require more user effort to spot fraudulent activity when it occurs.
2) I u