Motorola and Discover put to test NFC for RFID based payments

Filed in archive Near Field Communication on February 22, 2007

Mobile banking is all set to get a new dimension as Discover Financial Services and Motorola are collaborating to trial technology for testing mobile banking and RFID enabled payment platform. This is for the first time that Discover would be testing NFC technology for RFID based payments. It is also an initial trial of M-Wallet technology from Motorola. Motorola has been working on the M-Wallet service for quite some time so that payments could be made using NFC technology. Besides making payment it could also be used for making person to person money transfers, redeeming electronic discount coupons and checking account balances using your cell phone. M-Wallet will be able to support up to fifty kinds of cards.

If M-Wallet meets the success as expected I wonder whether we would have to say goodbye to the plastic cards which we use as of now since our cell phone would undertake all our transactions at the click of a button. We will probably have to wait till 2008 when the first NFC powered Motorola phone would hit the market and if you are wondering why it is taking time then the answer is that there has been a low demand among wireless carriers for phones which support NFC transactions.