The world’s largest mobile network operator is accelerating its pace for NFC. China Mobile just announced a roadmap for its NFC plans, including NFC SIM cards with an accompanying mobile wallet.
From the NFC Times:
(A top China Mobile official) said the telco plans to issue NFC SIMs offering 500-kilobytes of space, which could support more than 10 applications. That could include multiple payment applications, as well as transit ticketing, coupons and city card services. The SIMs would support the single-wire protocol standard. The telco said it would gradually issue NFC SIMs as a default, likely only to certain subscribers.
China Mobile long been interested in mobile payments. The carrier wanted to deploy its own solutions based on a proprietary standard, but the initiative was stopped after an internal review. Earlier this year, it became clear that the banking industry’s contactless mobile payment standards based on NFC were adopted as the national standard. And China Mobile has decided to build its mobile payment service based on NFC.
China Mobile also had already disclosed plans for launching the NFC SIMs and its wallet in up to 12 provinces in February–considered a very large NFC trial. That would be followed by a full commercial rollout later in the year, according to the telco’s plans.
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