Taipei residents to pay for commuting on mobiles

Philips and BenQ have introduced a prototype Near Field Communication (NFC) phone that will allow Taipei residents to make secure payments for rides on the city's Mass Transit Rail.

The trial, which begins on 1 September this year, will involve 40 participants from the public who can register to be part of the pilot at Taipei Smart Card corporation's website.

Philips is also working with electronics and telecommunication players under Taiwan's Proximity Mobile Transaction Service Alliance, to implement a contactless NFC interface in the country's retail and banking environments. The Alliance is an initiative of the Ministry of Economic Affair's Committee of Communication Industry Development.

NFC is a contactless technology jointly developed by Philips and Sony, and is endorsed by global standards bodies such as the ISO. More than 40 companies from various industries are members of the NFC Forum, established to drive future developments of the technology.

Calling NFC the "next big thing", the company's Singapore's chairman and CEO Mourad Mankarios said NFC technology, which combines identification tech with communication and security, will "open up a whole new world of possibilities for innovative applications" via electronic devices.

Mankarios added that apart from financial applications being secure, the NFC's operating range of 10 to 20cm made it difficult for other people to abuse the technology.

ABI Research has also pointed to a growing use of the technology in mobile phones. By 2009, the market analyst estimates, 30 per cent of the 850 million new mobile phones shipped worldwide will be NFC-enabled.

According to Arthur Pok, Philips Singapore's sales and marketing director for identification, NFC embedded in electronic devices such as mobile phones and home entertainment systems, can act as a smart card token and enable peer-to-peer data transfer, enabling devices to "talk" to each other. For example, a businessman making an overseas trip can book his flight and hotel room via his mobile phone and use it at the airport to print out his boarding pass. He can also check in using a device embedded with an NFC chip, and transfer a "key" to his mobile phone which he can use to access his hotel room.

Philips launched its first pilot project earlier this year, using the Nokia 3220 mobile phone, in the form of a ticket-payment system for the bus transportation in Hanau, Germany. Pok added that the electronics giant is currently working on several NFC-related projects worldwide, such as mobile payment, event ticketing and smart media for entertainment content.

Philips' Mankarios said the company is not ruling out the possibility of incorporating biometrics into its NFC-enabled devices.

Vivian Yeo writes for ZDNet Asia