Citigroup has developped a NFC mobile phone… Citi is today’s pre-eminent financial services company, with some 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries…
Citigroup organization has developped a NFC mobile phone and they will brand it with the Citi logo. According to a report filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the phone will utilize an NFC payment application developed by Citi on the handsets. On March’s report, we can notice clearly the Citi logo on the front of the tiny handset.
A successful Near Field Communication test was involved storing a MasterCard Worldwide PayPass application on phones made by Nokia for subscribers of large U.S. mobile operator AT&T. Nevertheless, the branded phone that has been tested to meet FCC rules for its NFC features appears to be targeted at the U.S. market. It is a GSM handset complying with frequencies used by mobile operators there. The phone is small and light, leading one observer to speculate Citi plans to issue the phone at little or no cost to customers at all.
So be ready for this new Citi NFC mobile !!!
Source : www.contactlessnews.com
www.citigroup.com
Flickr NFC & RFID Photos
Great First step!! The natural trend will be banks doing what they do best, being the issuer. banks will be able to issuer soft credit or debit cards through OTA or directly on the NFC chip enabled phone. This will allow the banks to control not only the customer ownership but all the necesary security and processing. This will be the trend becuase the telcos reluctance to open their network or sim to third parties without trying to keep most of the generated revenue. The future is an independent contacless chip that can be inserted in anyphone and runs on any network without access to the sim. This will librate the banks or any other issuer to provide a complete end to end contactless payment system without or with a Telco.