San Francisco, Aug 3: The days of plastic credit cards could be numbered if tests of a mobile payment system by top US cellphone companies proves successful.
The experiment, reported on Monday by Bloomberg, allies cellphone giants Verizon and AT&T with credit-card company Discover and banking giant Barclays to allow customers to pay for goods and services by holding their phone near specially equipped cash registers.
The experiment raises the momentum in the mobile payments field, where leading credit-card companies Visa and Mastercard are already working on a separate system to allow customers to pay without having to physically swipe their cards.
The new system would use a technology called near-field communications to process payments via users phones.
The purchase amount would then be added to the consumer’s mobile-phone bill.