M-Commerce

' point and shoot '

Nokia has announced a pilot in the UK for the phone to be used for payments. The handsets which will carry an RFID chip will allow users to ‘ swipe ‘ there phone on the London Underground to pay for journeys – presently the ‘ Oyster ‘ scheme operates across the entire underground and allows commuters to use a dedicated card which is ' swiped ' over special readers for the journey and is 'topped up‘ with credits.

marketing technology

In another recent trial in London, Oyster partnered with Barclaycard to allow for low value purchases to be made using the card.With the incorporation of the technology into the phone the UK can start to catch up to the wider use of this kind of technology in the Asian markets.

News International has started to incorporate QR codes on their most popular title ‘ The Sun ‘. QR codes or ‘ Quick Read ‘ codes will be present through the title over the coming months and will allow users to ‘ scan ‘ the codes to then receive content directly to there phones. The software is now incorporate into most new Nokia handsets and is downloadable from the web for other handset manufacturers.

While this still requires a download to the majority of handsets and the fact people in the UK are far happier with SMS codes I am not entirely sure of the viability of this method to direct people to ‘ content ‘ .

Schemes to extend barcodes to mobile are nothing new, however the application of this technology makes far more sense in this context.