HEADLINE NEWS
China: Dual-Interface SIMs Enable Fare Payment in Chongqing
Unicom and Chongqing Yucheng Transportation Card, along with partners, introduced the “cqpass” to enable subscribers to put the Chongqing transit card onto mobile phones. Besides bus and other transit fare payment, the application can also reportedly be used for some payment or access in restaurants, cinemas and other venues. The project does not use NFC, but specially equipped phones and SIMs. When launched, Unicom offered phones from Chinese manufacturer Changhong that incorporate an RF antenna in the back cover connecting to the SIM card, both provided by SIM vendor Watchdata. The vendor later provided its regular SIMpass product for the service, which has an antenna attached to the card and can be used with a number of other phone models. A second phase of the trial was to enable subscribers to top up the Yucheng application over the mobile network.
Watchdata’s SIMpass product, which connects an RF antenna to a SIM card, has found a market in some Chinese cities, such as Chongqing, Xiamen and Guangzhou, and in Thailand through mobile operator TrueMove. It’s seen by most observers as another peripheral serving as a bridge to standardized NFC phones. Handset maker Changhong has reportedly produced its own NFC phone, but the device is not yet used in a trial or rollout.
* 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.
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