You might hold a future technological innovation in your hand right now if you attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game during the 2006-2007 season. The Atlanta hawks distributed some 250 Nokia 3220 phones to season tickets holders who also have Chase Visa cards and are Cingular Wireless subscribers. The phones are NFC-enabled. NFC, or Near Field Communication, is a wireless transmission technology being developed primarily for cell phones to support mobile commerce (m-commerce) and other cell phone activities. NFC-unlike other wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and Wifi which use radio waves for communication-works on magnetic fi eld induction.
Atlanta Hawk season ticket holders lucky enough to be given one of these phones could use them for many purposes including: Buying food, drinks, merchandise, and other concessions Downloading player animations, ring tones, and wallpaper (of the Atlanta Hawks team, of course) For buying merchandise, the phones contained electronic wallet (e-wallet) software that acted as an intermediary between the concession reader device that contained the total for the purchase amount and the user's Chase Visa card. Without fumbling around to find cash or a credit card, the user simply waved his or her phone within four centimeters of the reader device. The person's Chase Visa account was then automatically charged the appropriate amount. This is quite similar to how RFID works, which we covered in this chapter.
However, unlike many RFID implementations, which require you to carry a special RFID-enabled card or other device, NFC technology is embedded into your cell phone, something that most people carry around with them all the time. For downloading content to the cell phone, the Atlanta Hawks created 60 smart posters. These smart posters-although seemingly just paper posters on the wall-contained electronic content such as ring tones and images.
Using the phone, a season ticket holder could select the content he or she wanted, and then-again-wave the phone within four centimeters • • of the poster. The selected content was then downloaded to the cell phone. Player animations were free, but other content such as ring tones cost about $2 to $3 each, with the billing being handled by Cingular. Near Field Communication is a technology that has been endorsed by just about every mobile network operator.
Further, most payment service providers (i.e., banks, credit card issuers, debit card issuers, and prepaid card issuers) have also endorsed NFC as the shortrange communications media of the future for mobile phones. Big companies like Motorola and MasterCard are among the many endorsing the use of NFC. The goal is to allow you to keep your account and card information on your cell phone. Most people now have cell phones and carry them with them wherever they go. In the case of bank and credit card accounts, the e-wallet software interacts with very little private fi nancial information stored on the cell phone. The cell phone typically contains only an account number. The e-wallet software uses that account number to connect to the issuer's infrastructure via the cell phone network. On the back end on the issuer's side, account information is accessed and updated.
The only communication back to the e-wallet software on the cell phone is that the transaction was either successful or denied. When fully implemented, NFC-enabled financial transactions via your cell phone will enable you to buy a variety of goods and services. Some of these purchases can be extremely small (called micropayments), even less than $1. These types of purchases will be extremely fast, enabling retailers to move people more quickly through lines. You will probably even be able to buy some types of merchandise, store it on your cell phone, and save it for later "consumption" or use. For example, at a movie theater you could buy tickets early in the day for an evening show time and save them on your cell phone. When you get to the movie theater in the evening, you walk directly through the line where tickets are taken, stopping only long enough for a reader device to determine that your cell phone has the appropriate tickets.
Questions
1. Do a little research on the Web. To what extent has Near Field Communication and these types of contactless payments become a reality? What cell phone service providers offer electronic wallet capabilities?
2. How might NFC-enabled financial transactions support the software-as-a-service model? How might NFC-enabled financial transactions support the push technology concept?
3. What about security? If someone steals your NFC-enabled phone, they may have access to your accounts. What are providers doing in the area of security?
4. How are NFC-enabled financial transactions further evidence that we are moving toward an e-society? Can you foresee a time when physical cards (credit, debit, and the like) will no longer be needed? What other cards do you carry in your wallet that could become a part of your e-wallet in your phone?
5. How can NFC-enabled fi nancial transactions be used to support the notion of the Long Tail we discussed in Chapter 5?