HEADLINE NEWS
SK Telecom Launches ‘Next-Generation’ Payment Service
SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator, has announced it is launching its T Smart Pay service, what it calls a “next-generation” payment service.
The new service, which expands on the telco’s current contactless-mobile payment service, Moneta, would enable users to store as many as eight credit cards, along with 30 membership or loyalty cards and 50 coupons on their phones, said the telco. Customers would download SK Telecom’s T Smart Pay application to their SIM cards, which in South Korea have a contactless interface and hook into antennas built into specially equipped handsets sold by the country’s major operators. The phones and SIMs do not comply with NFC standards.
The T Smart Pay application and mobile wallet appears to be the first service launched by SK Telecom’s joint venture, Hana SK Card, with the Hana Financial Group.
SK Telecom bought a 49% stake in the credit card unit of the Hana Financial Group for more than US$340 million. At the time of the planned purchase, last December, the telco's CEO, Jung Man-won, said plans called for expanding its mobile credit card payment service and launching "next-generation" payment services this year.
According to a report, SK Telecom would first offer the new service to customers of the Hana SK Card. It was unclear if subscribers would need new SIM cards, although that is likely.
Unlike the mobile-payment service introduced in 2004 by Japan’s leading operator, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom is not launching its own payment scheme and brand, though it is expected to collect a portion of the merchant transaction fees from mobile purchases. The T Smart Pay service would support a Visa payWave contactless application, as SK Telecom’s Moneta mobile-payment and banking service does now. The mobile-retail payment part of the service is little used, however. Subscribers use their phones for transit fare collection and banking services more often.
SK Telecom is expected to eventually move the T smart Pay service to SIM cards in NFC phones. The telco, like its rival KT, plans to launch NFC service this year. KT also offers mobile payment and banking using proprietary dual-interface SIM cards. SK Telecom said it wants to become a “global leader in the field of smart payment," which indicates it would have to eventually support the NFC global standard.
The telco has other plans for its SIMs, as well. It is preparing to launch 1-gigabyte SIM cards during the second quarter, which can store photos, videos, big address books and even an Android user-interface to turn low-end handsets into Android or Android-like phones. These Smart SIMs will not support a contactless interface, at least not at first. And the Android feature would likely be used only if the telco is able to export the technology to China, as it plans to try to do.
SK Telecom said it is also experimenting with another wireless technology with its SIMs, ZigBee, combining it with smartphones and location-based services.
But T Smart Pay would support contactless technology under the ISO/IEC 14443 international standard, if not yet NFC. SK Telecom said the service would work like an “integrated digital wallet,” enabling subscribers to pay, receive discount coupons and add membership points “in one single process.” Subscribers would also be able to look up their transaction history, point balances and other information on their mobile phones. It wasn’t clear whether the new service will also support contactless ATM withdrawals and stock trading like SK Telecom’s Moneta service.
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Such an interesting post. The government really monitored budget for the greater process of communication. It's a good news, as such were bounded to a faster mobile access.