Making payments by a single swipe of a mobile phone could be commonplace by 2012.
Phone payments took a step closer towards becoming widely used in the UK, with the completion of a successful London-based trial.
The "Ewallet" experiment, organised by network provider O2, saw 500 people given a specially-adapted mobile phone handset, incorporating Oyster card and Barclaycard technology. The guinea pigs then travelled extensively on the London Underground - making around 100 journeys each over the trial period - and bought snacks at retailers including Eat and Krispy Kreme.
Each payment was transacted from the triallists' accounts via a single swipe of the Nokia phone - dramatically speeding up the time it would have taken to buy the goods otherwise. Funding for the payments was made via a top-up account, similar to the current Oyster card system.
The technology has been adapted from the Japanese market, which has used similar devices for the past four years. A spokeswoman for O2 expressed the hope that a London-based system would be in place by the 2012 Olympics.
Speaking to the Guardian, technology expert Philip Makinson at Greenwich Consulting said that it might be difficult to get the project off the ground, however. "It requires cooperation, not just between handset manufacturers and network operators, but third parties such as Visa or Mastercard and banks and retailers," he commented.
"To reach critical mass you really need to have at least three of the big [phone] operators involved."
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