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U.S.: M-payment Start-up Moves to Contactless Stickers
The first phase of the project issued contactless microSD cards with external antennas to 128 students and staff of Brigham Young University-Idaho. They inserted the cards into certain phone models and made payments at the campus bookstore out of their university payment accounts. In early 2010, a handful of the users got microSDs with built-in contactless antennas. Then in June, RFinity switched to lower-cost passive-contactless stickers, which a local bank, Citizens Community, has issued along with the university. Users attach the stickers to their phones or other devices and tap to conduct transactions at the bookstore and a handful of off-campus merchants. The transactions are expected later to be handled via the automated-clearinghouse network with funds drawn from users’ checking accounts at the bank.
RFinity had planned to roll out the mobile-payment service using contactless microSDs but moved to passive stickers mainly because of cost. The start-up appears to be following a model similar to U.S.-based Bling Nation, which signs up community banks and caters to local merchants, cutting fees by using its own processing network. RFinity used the university's payment network in its first deployment. Later, it plans to handle transactions by bank-to-bank transfers via the automated clearinghouse network. RFinity had planned to use the contactless microSDs for its peer-to-peer payment service, but interim CEO Steve McCown said the firm has developed phone software that resembles contactless P2P transactions.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose. N/A: Not available or not applicable. Last update: July 2010
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