ASIA S Korea : Nokia and a further 10 mobile operators have thrown their weight behind a GSM Association initiative to enable the worldwide use of mobile phones for payments at retail outlets.

KPN, Maxis Communications Bhd, mobilkom austria, O2, Orange, SFR, SingTel, SKT, Vodafone and Wind have joined the 14 mobile operators* that initiated the project in February. The handset vendors in the programme include Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, which both plan to participate in the first trials scheduled to begin in October.

The GSMA’s 'Pay-Buy Mobile' initiative seeks to define a common global approach to using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems. Together with a SIM/Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) card in a mobile handset, NFC can be used to enable a wide range of secure, interoperable and transparent services, such as credit and debit payments.

"After several fragmented initiatives, the mobile phone industry is now uniting around a single approach to enabling the mobile phone to be used, instead of cash or plastic credit card, at point of sale," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile phone operators. "The support of the world’s leading mobile operators and handset manufacturers should ensure that Pay-Buy Mobile is adopted worldwide, enabling vendors to achieve economies of scale and consumers to eventually use their mobile phones to pay for goods and services wherever they travel." Mr. Conway is in Seoul this week to discuss the initiative with Dr. Young-Chu Cho, CEO of KTF, which is leading the ‘Pay-Buy Mobile’ initiative.

The Pay-Buy Mobile initiative will build on the work of the major credit card companies, which have developed specifications to ensure global interoperability between chip cards and point of sale terminals, regardless of manufacturer, the financial institution and location of transaction. The GSMA intends to work closely with leading financial intermediaries to provide the transaction solutions.

“The combination of NFC and UICC is an excellent choice to enable the development of secure and interoperable mobile payment systems worldwide. Nokia is committed to the specification, implementation and introduction of NFC handsets supporting the standardized UICC-based NFC secure element,” said Dieter May, Vice President and Head of Nokia Emerging Business Unit. “Nokia looks forward to participating with the GSMA and the operator community in trials of this exciting technology.”

“Thanks to the growing momentum behind this initiative, we are confident that we can build a global mobile payment infrastructure that is both highly convenient and highly secure for consumers,” said Dr. Young-Chu Cho.