Australia's ANZ and Visa have teamed up to pilot an iPhone case that turns the handset into a contactless payments device.
The four week trial will see fifty participants from the Sydney and Melbourne offices of the two companies given the cases with a secure microSD memory card that hosts a pre-paid ANZ account that can be topped up over the Internet. This will enable them to make payments of under A$100 at the point of sale by waving the phones against contactless readers that are already installed at over 20,000 outlets across the country. The system taps technology from Texan start-up DeviceFidelity which has already been piloted in the US by Wells Fargo, Bank of America and US Bancorp. Vipin Kalra, country manager, Visa, says: "The possibilities with mobile are endless, your mobile could allow more than just payments - you could manage your account, detect fraud and receive real time offers from merchants. Your mobile could become the new virtual wallet - it's in the future but that's definitely where we're headed." Earlier this week it was reported that Apple has rejected plans to include NFC chips in the next generation of iPhones. The rumours have kickstarted a debate over Apple's long-term plans for mobile payments, and left the field open for competing systems from card scheme operators such as Visa, Google Android and telecomms firms.
