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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

With the planned trial, KDDI steps up its push for NFC in Japan, opposing rival NTT DoCoMo, the main promoter of Sony Corp.’s FeliCa contactless technology that is present in more than 60 million wallet phones in circulation in Japan. KDDI and Japan’s No. 3 mobile telco, Softbank Mobile, believe a move to standard NFC could increase the variety of applications and encourage more use of contactless-mobile services by subscribers, including payment and ticketing. KDDI believes, for example, that government ID applications, such as the one used on Japan’s contactless driver’s license cards–is a natural fit for phones. Government contactless applications follow international standards, not FeliCa, though it’s unclear yet whether the government and especially subscribers want ID on their phones. KDDI and Softbank think NFC also would also give them a better business model compared with the FeliCa wallet technology, which is controlled by DoCoMo and Sony. But with hundreds of thousands of transit and payment terminals supporting FeliCa in Japan, this NFC trial–while much more ambitious than the few other NFC trials KDDI and Softbank have held–is just a small step toward the rollout of NFC. Such a rollout depends on a shift in strategy by DoCoMo.