Customers of the Turkish Akbank can pay wirelessly with their mobile phone starting today. For now, only BlackBerry user can be part of the experiment, owners of phones of other brands can join later.
The Turkish bank has been chosen by credit card company VISA to host an experiment with wireless mobile payments. The microSD card that is given to users that are part of the experiment is fitted with a NFC chip, that enables the user to pay buy holding the phone close to a payment terminal. NFC, an acronym for Near Field Communication, has multiple appliances. Public transportation companies in many countries already use the system to let travellers play for their journey.
Application
The NFC in the microSD card is created to handle the actual payment. Communication with an app on the mobile phone is possible as well. The app gives information about the payments that have been done. According to VISA, it's also possible to store data on the special microSD. The company gives no information about the actual amount of data storage.