Visa Wireless Trial for NTT DoCoMo

ASIA : Visa International, Nippon Shinpan, OMC Card and AEON Credit today announced the start of a pilot program, together with NTT DoCoMo, Inc., to test a service for making credit card payments at bricks and mortar merchants via DoCoMo 504i and 504iS series mobile phones, which are equipped with infrared transmission (IrDA) ports.

Inset above shows how Visa currently works in ASIA via an Ericsson mobile phone.

Visa, Nippon Shinpan and DoCoMo will begin piloting this service in Tokyo from June of this year. A commercialized service involving participation of other card companies is targeted for spring 2004.

The trial leverages a DoCoMo "i-appli™" application for payments based on the "Visa Proximity Payments Messaging Specification" made using credit card data that is downloaded and stored in DoCoMo 504i and 504iS mobile phones. Because the trial uses existing features, there is no need for additional functionality in the phones. As such, the companies expect this convenient new service to win favor among the more than 8 million owners of DoCoMo 504i and 504iS mobile phones. Every DoCoMo 504i and 504iS phone is standard-equipped with an IrDA port to exchange information with other IrDA-equipped devices via an infrared signal.

The pilot will have two phases. In the first phase, Nippon Shinpan and DoCoMo will focus on technical evaluations of the service, including communication formats, payment methods and user operability. Nippon Shinpan will select 3,000 monitors from among Visa cardholders and provide infrared-payment terminals to about 500 merchants.

Visa International will provide full technical and marketing support and will help create a localized infrared-payment mechanism for the Japanese market based on its global specification for proximity payments. Visa will ensure global interoperability with other infrared-payment formats based on the same guidelines to promote rapid commercialization. DoCoMo will provide technical support regarding its i-appli payment application and the infrared transmission capability of its mobile phones.

In the second phase, which begins this autumn, OMC Card and AEON Credit Service will join the pilot test to recruit more users and expand the range of participating merchants, bringing the pilot test closer in form to full commercialization.

The new service will make credit payments simpler and more convenient than ever before by taking advantage of the credit card payment functionality of DoCoMo 504i and 504iS mobile phones. The service will increase the appeal of credit card-based payments among young adults, and also promote wider use of credit cards for small transactions traditionally handled with cash.

DoCoMo's i-appli functionality takes mobile payments beyond the realm of conventional e-payment applications, by leveraging text and visual content to provide personalized marketing that will expand credit card usage to new customer and merchant segments.

This Press Release Sponsored by AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES

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