That wouldn't have *anything* to do with the 'free money' given to the guinea pigs, would it?

No.

Of course not.

How cynically foolish of me to think that anyone's opinion could be swayed by a nice shiny new phone, and some 'credit' to spend.

Does anyone have a breakdown of the spending profiles of the guinea pigs (without any personally identifiable data, of course!) to see just what proportion (if any!) was spent on BOOZE?

In Slovenia we've had the ability to pay for stuff with mobile phones for at least 7 years now, and it works with virtually any phone (it's a bit clumsy with clamshell phones though), and the amount simply appears on your monthly blii (or is deducted from the prepaid card). No special phones needed.

Nokia maybe the first in Europe, but I've been able to do that on my Samsung phone in korea for almost 2 years.

I pay for the subway, buses, trains and the majority of taxis accept it. Heck, I can even use it at a lot of the smaller "7-11" type places and some of the larger department stores.

If I wanted to I could link my phone to my bank account and use it just like a debit card.

-Black Copter 'cuz I can't turn off the gps tracking in the damn thing.

So once they've nicked your phone they'll now be able to escape by public transport all at your expense.

Armed with my oyster card and some gaffer tape I shall shortly be able to pay for travel with my SonyEricsson - beat that nokia.

"Apparently 22 per cent of triallists increased their use of public transport too, but that could be thanks to the £60 credit they were all given at the start of the trial"

Seriously? Your given £60 to spend on booze and 22% choose to spend it on a bus ride instead?

At least it'll be much easier to track their escape if that happens, in the way people fleeing the country by plain are trapped a) by customs, but also b) by fact airline tickets appear on their credit card bill.

Copter cos if builtin tracking

And the next obvious step after making your phone more valuable than your credit card is to add a fingerprint module so other people can't use it (without stealing your phone and chopping off parts of your body).

Except some tosser probably patented it as a novel and new idea, and is sitting on the patent waiting for lots of cash from mobile phone makers.

Why don't they make a new credit card system called chip'n'print, where the cards have built in fingerprint readers whilst they're at it, and they'd still manage to mess up the design by failing to encrypt something important.

I'm off down the patent office.

1) Nokia is not the only NFC mobile phone manufacturer. I would say that Sagem is actually closer to what a real NFC mobile phone will look like thanks to its My700X.

2) This is definitely not the largest pilot in the Europe: the Payez Mobile pilot (http://www.payezmobile.com/) in France actually involves more than a thousand users, and it offers the same set of applications (transportation and payment).

Still it's good to hear that customers like their NFC mobile phones.

Wasn't there a trial of something called Mondex or something like that in Swindon years ago? That was all about cashless low-value transactions, like buying newspapers etc. Whatever happened to that?

Paris, 'cos it's a no-brainer!

Something has to replace contactless smart cards now the security has been cracked; the question is how long before the Mobile Phone top-up is cracked?

Didn't object to lab tests says leading medical research company.

Come on people, of course Nokia will say its a success, they got phones to flog.

our tight fisted banks would not pay for the chipped credit/debit cards that support encryption so your pin is transferred to the card and the resulting response to the reader is sent in the clear.

I think NTT DoCoMo came out with a phone with a fingerprint reader so its already been done so no patent for you chum.

The public like NFC, the banks love it because it allows them to reach the consumers without having to pay the networks anything to do so.

The transport companies love it because they don't trust their staff with cash.

Unfortunately most phones are bought by networks, who don't see why they should subsidise a phone technology that not only doesn't make them anything but costs them money.

Nokia is certainly not the only manufacturer and this is certainly not the only "pilot" with NFC.

And the NFC (in Nokia) uses Mifare which is not safe. (Its contained in the Secure Element in the 'phone).

The PIN is not transferred to your card. The NFC simply acts as the card data and the payment terminal should ask for the PIN. If it doesn't then this is a micro-payment. Micro-payments (less than E 30) are / will be controlled by the Payments Service Directive (PSD) or will be when this becomes law in European countries, (Nov 2009) and requires authentication and approval at least once every 5 transactions.

Think the trial went by the wayside as it was too expensive to implement etc.

Now remember we have paywave (Visa) and Paypass (Mastercard) and think American Express do something similar in the States too

Frankly, I'd rather this tech was on my credit card rather than my mobile as they can be easily blocked and I don't have to cough up to replace if some scrote wants to nick it.