HEADLINE NEWS
U.S.: Early Trial Pairs Discover With Motorola
Discover conducted the trial among some of its HQ staffers, who could make payments with Discover’s Zip contactless application at a dozen or so merchant locations near the office. Using the wallet application and a rudimentary NFC phone, they could choose either their personal or corporate Discover card account on the phones to tap to pay. They and 950 other participants, who also had phones with a wallet application but no contactless functionality, could view their card balances, recent transactions and cash-back bonus amounts on the handset screens.
Discover also launched a contactless sticker trial with employees in early 2009 and appears likely to commercially introduce its Zip contactless application soon on passive stickers customers can attach to the back of their phones or other electronic devices. Unlike competing U.S. card brands, Visa, MasterCard and American Express, Discover appears to be uninterested in contactless payment on cards and is gearing up for contactless-mobile payment via stickers and, later, NFC phones. But its partner in the 2007 NFC trial, Motorola, based nearby in suburban Chicago, appears to have lost interest in both NFC and m-wallet applications.
* 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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