Monday, September 08, 2014

Vodafone's New Mobile Wallet is Apple iPhone 6 Competition

Yesterday's Financial Times of London published an article announcing Vodafone (VOD) and Visa have a new service using near field communication technology (NFC) built into mobile phones to make payments by swiping a phone near a payment terminal.

Vodafone's technology on Android phones will compete with Apple's (AAPL) new iPhones which are expected to have NFC built in for mobile payments linked to their iTunes store.

Vodafone to launch UK mobile payments
September 7, 2014 1:33 pm
Excerpts:
Vodafone will launch a mobile wallet service in the UK next month into a market set to be shaken up by Apple’s plans for a payments platform.

The British mobile group has developed its own service with Visa that will work with a special SIM card embedded with NFC (near field communication) technology that can be used to swipe for payments at contactless tills.

Vodafone is working with third-party loyalty card companies such as Nectar, and will open up the technology to banks to use with their own payment services. The Vodafone wallet can also be used to pay for travel on London Underground, and will allow person-to-person payments between customers.

Vodafone is planning a consumer launch later this year for the service. But it will probably be beaten to the market by Apple, which is expected to integrate mobile payments into its forthcoming range of iPhones, due to be unveiled this week. Vodafone’s mobile application will only be available on Android smartphones.

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