Near Field Communication - The Cell Phone Wallet

Popsci: Cell Phone Wallet

An NFC chip in your phone will send your credit-card number -- stored on your phone or on the chip -- by way of short-distance radio waves.

An electronic reader at the checkout will decode the number and ring up your purchase. Unlike radio-frequency identification (RFID) and other existing contactless payment systems, NFC chips allow two-way information exchange by rolling an RF transmitter and reader into one five-millimeter package.

That means the chip can also take in data, such as a receipt zapped to it by a cash register or a bus schedule from a tag embedded in a bus-stop sign.

You don't even have to buy a new phone. When it hits stores next spring, the miniSD-card-size adapter from SanDisk can add NFC to any smartphone with a Symbian operating system when it hits stores next spring.

The first pay-by-phone option should roll out later this year, with more applications to follow.



Since Near Field Communication uses the same radio frequency as current touch-free payment cards, such as Speedpass, your phone will work with existing readers. But it has an extra advantage: You can lock your handset with a password, so if it's lost, no one else can use it.


Your phone can store your commuter pass and radio it to an entrance turnstile. Bus-riders in Hanau, Germany, are already swiping their way on board in the first commercial application of NFC. Next up: movie, concert and plane tickets.


Any object with an NFC tag can send information to another. For example: A tagged DVD box at the store can send your phone a movie trailer. And in a current trial in Atlanta, users wave their phones in front of a poster to receive game stats and videos of their favorite Hawks players.