RFID for Cashless Payments

If you walk out the door without your wallet, would you return home to get it? What about for your mobile phone?

Research shows that people are more likely to return home for a forgotten mobile phone than a wallet. To make life simpler, wouldn’t it be nice to have your wallet inside your phone?

That’s essentially what some experts are doing with NFC or Near Field Communications. It’s a type of RFID technology used for cashless payments, and some mobile phone producers now make it available as part of a phone.

In London and Vienna, mobile network operators are testing systems that allow users to pay for transit tickets, lotto tickets and snacks from vending machines using their secure NFC-enabled mobile phones.

The tests are paving the way for wide-spread use of mobile phones for payments.

Who knows? In the future, NFC-enabled mobile phones may be as widely accepted as credit or debit cards.