INSIDE Contactless announced an initiative to create a new class of mobile payment solutions that banks, brands, transit agencies and others can starting in 2010.
INSIDE has already engaged with several technology companies that share its vision to develop a variety of mobile payment solutions based on INSIDE’s MicroPass platform that will enable existing mobile phones to support mobile payments, as well as transit, ID and access control applications. A number of these solutions expected to reach the market as early as this fall.
INSIDE has released the first suite of add-on mobile payment solutions, contactless sticker products based on INSIDE’s MicroPass platform. Mobile handset stickers can turn just about any personal item – from a mobile phone to an employee ID badge – into a payment device. Although not electronically connected to the phone, these stickers are able to support debit, prepaid debit and credit card payments, and are convenient plastic card replacements.
Several new mobile payment solutions coming to market from partners through INSIDE’s initiative will enable mobile phones to integrate with a MicroPass-based secure element outside the phone, enabling solutions to be deployed more rapidly in 2010. Using microSD cards, existing BlueTooth channels, existing data connections, and other methods to communicate with the phone, these peripheral solutions will open the door to more robust, NFC-like payment, transit and access control applications in a next phase of deployment.
These solutions will enable a mobile phone user to make a payment from among several virtual credit or debit cards stored within the mobile payment peripheral device, see the balance remaining on prepaid debit cards or transit passes, and even collect and redeem coupons and loyalty points.
MicroPass products have already been approved by Visa, MasterCard and Discover Network for use in a number of card products. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/nfcnews-4.gif)
