HEADLINE NEWS
Taiwan: Taiwan’s No. 1 Telco To Trial SIM-based NFC Wallet
Chunghwa Telecom’s NFC wallet trial will test two payment applications and a Chunghwa Telecom ID application, which is probably a membership card, stored on NFC SIMs and running in a trio of high-end Android phones. Users, which will include employees, will be able to tap to pay with Taiwan’s EasyCard e-purse, which is accepted for transit fare collection and small retail purchases. They’ll also be able to pay at retail stores accepting MasterCard PayPass, with a credit application issued by Cathay United Bank.
Taiwan’s largest telco has already trialed NFC several times, but wants more tests with real NFC SIMs supporting the single-wire protocol and also to test its own trusted service manager with its ID application. The wallet trial could serve as a prelude to an NFC launch. The telco, however, probably won’t commercially launch NFC until the proposed NFC joint venture it is part of gets approval from the Taiwanese government, observers say. That proposed venture consists of all five of Taiwan’s mobile operators, including Taiwan Mobile and FarEast Tone, as well as the country’s major contactless-payment scheme, EasyCard Corp.
* 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: Oct. 2012
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