Paying for KFC with your NFC phoneIf you stumbled onto this site because you typed KFC, this page is nowhere close to Kentucky Fried Chicken. But don't be so eager to click the red cross at the top right corner yet. There's still something of interest to you: The possibility that you may no longer need to bring along your wallet on your next trip to a chicken outlet in Singapore.  You mean I get to eat KFC for free?You wish. However, here's the next best thing. With NFC, short for Near Field Communication, you get to pay for your chicken by waving your phone. NFC is a short-range wireless technology that enables communication between devices less than 10cm apart. It is very similar to RFID, somewhat like Bluetooth and is most commonly used for contactless payments with your mobile phone. Is this some sort of gizmo wizardry?Nope. In fact, this technology is pretty much used everyday in Japan. Over there, they call it FeliCa. Walk up to any local in Shibuya on any day and there's a high likelihood you'll talk to someone who's using an "Osaifu Kei Tai"--a wallet phone. Chances are they'll tell you they use it as a smart card for public transport or pay for groceries at a supermarket. That's cool! Can I do that in Singapore, too?Well, here's the tricky part. You'll need an NFC-enabled phone for a start. In addition, the relevant industries/parties must be involved in implementing this technology. It's not as simple as we make it out to be and we'll spare you the nitty-gritty. The good news is one of Singapore's telco operator StarHub has begun its public trial of a new mobile payment service based on the NFC technology. The six-month trial involves 1,000 StarHub mobile phone users and taps on the island-wide network of 20,000 acceptance points operated by its partner EZ-Link. We're one of them and we're going to tell you what it's like to leave the wallet at home and survive a day with just our NFC-enabled test phone. The setupYou didn't think you could just take any NFC-enabled phone and watch it perform miracles, did you? First of all, for the purpose of the trial, our test phone was embedded with an EZ-Link chip and an NFC-enabled chip. The earlier supports e-purse capabilities and will be used mainly for getting past train gantries and making purchases at retail stores by tapping our phone on the readers, while the latter allows us to download information or discount vouchers over the air. Installation of the software and drivers was a breeze and we managed to get everything up and running in under 5 minutes. That included the time to top up credit on the EZ-Link chip via the Sony PaSoRi Reader and our Visa account. |
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