Japan: Telco to Offer Passive Stickers in Land of the Wallet Phone
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Softbank, Japan’s No. 3 mobile operator, plans to introduce passive stickers supporting any of three of Japan’s prepaid payment schemes for use with Apple’s iPhone 4. The iPhone is one the few models in Japan that does not carry the more advanced FeliCa wallet-phone technology. Users will presumably be able to tap the stickers to pay wherever the payment schemes are accepted.
Softbank, in introducing passive stickers, is apparently taking a step backward when it comes to contactless-mobile payment. After all, Japan pioneered the mass rollout of NFC-like mobile payment, with more than 60 million wallet phones distributed supporting domestic FeliCa technology from Sony. The phones enable subscribers to download applications over the air, check balances and perform other actions. But Softbank apparently believes offering the pricey stickers (2980 yen/US$36.60) is worth it to enable its millions of iPhone users the chance to tap to pay with at least three of Japan’s multitude of contactless-payment schemes. The iPhone is one of the few phone models in Japan that does pack a FeliCa chip. Softbank does support a move to full, standardized NFC phones in Japan to replace the FeliCa wallet-phone technology backed by its rival NTT DoCoMo. The stickers, which also support FeliCa, are designed to fit the back of the iPhone 4, but there apparently is nothing to prevent subscribers from sticking them to other devices.
* 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. ** Source: FeliCa Networks, figures estimated for May 2010. N/A: Not available or not applicable. Last update: Jan. 2011