Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/orange_quicktap/
Orange enables Samsung Galaxy SIII bonking
The future is Mastercard, but we'll take Visa too
Posted in Mobile, 4th September 2012 12:01 GMT
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Orange and Barclaycard have revived their QuickTap pay-by-bonk platform with support for the Samsung Galaxy SIII, despite EE's commitment to create a new platform [1] in cooperation with Mastercard.
Orange customers who fancy a bit of contractless action can, from tomorrow, get themselves a Samsung Galaxy SIII and score £50 in pay-by-bonk credit with which to show off to their iPhone-touting friends, as Orange whacks the defibrillation panels onto its payment platform before big daddy kills it off.
QuickTap last launched last June, and uses a Barclaycard-mediated platform stored on the SIM to enable pay-by-bonk. At its launch [2], only a special edition of the Samsung Tocco was supported, and despite NFC-enabled BlackBerrys appearing on the list at one point, there are currently no handsets supporting QuickTap – at least, until tomorrow's launch...
Anyone upgrading to a Galaxy SIII, or joining Orange to get one, will get £50 pre-loaded onto the phone – well up from the usual bribe offered to those prepared to give phone payments a try. QuickTap was envisioned as a multiple-card wallet, but hasn't yet evolved beyond a single pre-paid account which one loads with credit using an existing card, the money being spent by tapping against the till with each payment capped at £20.
The standard permits bigger purchases, authenticated with a PIN, but that's for the future – this is just for small-scale stuff.
Just as in all the UK's proximity-payment systems, the usual fraud prevention is in place, with loads of cryptography and fraudulent payments refunded [3], though that won't stop the naysayers worrying about virtual pickpockets.
More worrying for QuickTap is Everything Everywhere's avowed intention to create its own payment platform [4] in collaboration with Mastercard.
Despite appearances, Orange is just a brand – owned by EE along with T-Mobile – and is thus unlikely to maintain its own payment platform forever, but perhaps this resuscitation of QuickTap will help EE learn more about proximity-payments by phone – not least how big the bribe has to be before people will start using them. ®