What would I rather pick up my phone or my keys as I leave my house?

Today Nokia launch their first NFC enabled handset.

With one of these phones can I replace my Oyster card? How about my NFC car fob? What about the Garage Door? An my Bank Card has NFC so can I replace that?

The answer to all these questions is at this moment in time is NO. Therein lies the problem with standalone development and the current fixation that the App Store is the answer.

Nokia has over the last four years been working with a number of stakeholders in the NFC ecosystems. Trials that I know of include a trial of season tickets at Manchester City Football Club, replacement of Oyster Cards in London, cash replacement trials in France. They have worked hard on the development of a technology standard that will replace card readers over time, they have studied hard the ethnology around the change in behaviour.

Why then is the launch of the new handset inhibited? Because the other stakeholders in the NFC space fear that they will become locked into a walled garden controlled by Nokia perhaps? How about the fact that the innovation required for such a service now faces a lag because too much resource is directed to the needs of Apple and Android development?

If the mobile is no more than hardware and as a User I have an expectation that just like an MP3 player I should be able to fill it with the content that I want. The launch of new technology such as NFC into the mass market needs to be Federated more. That is when Nokia launch such a phone it needs to be reported by my Bank, Carmaker and Transportation provider who all tell me that I can now use it to access their services. Lets face it no Call Centre Assistant you talk to so far would be able of facilitating the firmware upgrades needed to install new services.

New steps in M-Payments

Total Telecom reports that the Italian Post Office's MVNO will have a number of Payment services available in an effort to distinguish itself from it carrier Vodafone.

Thus we finally have a Western European network looking to offer customers replacement of paper money and coins. The Italian Banking environment is still what underdeveloped compared to most with a number of regional banks rather than National banks when it comes to the retail sector and so the Post Office is still a major player when it comes to payments. This makes the target of 2M subscribers look somewhat conservative. Perhaps they need to take a leaf out of Tesco's book and look to grow more aggressively?

I hope that they are successful, and I hope that the GSMA take note and start to back M-Payments for the benefit of the Market rather than a get rich quick scheme as the seem to be with the present remittance based approach. Perhaps if they engaged with consultants that know the payments market rather than Blue Chip accountants they would be more flexible and finally manage to develop Mobile Payments. But that is unlikely and this has all the hallmarks of the dotmobi plan to "get rich quick" rather than aid the market!

Another organisation that could do with some Consulting help is Transport for London who are pushing ahead with a trial of NFC based handsets from Nokia on the O2 network. Whilst I support the movement of my Oyster Card onto my handset I do not think that the use of the UK network with the worst billing system will be an effective proof of concept. The Independent today writes about the trial; something the Guardian did on Monday. This is the second trial that I know of, a very small test took place in the summer with some 200 people using handsets I hope that this one will be bigger. I would also have hopes that they tested on the other networks to see how the billing systems function there both Pre and Post-Paid.

UPDATE: The press release has now been sent out and what 500 lucky O2 customers can now expect is the use of a Nokia handset for the next six months whilst they trial  the system.  Thus we have no great leap forward, rather we can expect another small step.  

I wonder if the move will force the  other networks to open up mobile payments or if we can 
expect to have to wait before we  have open access. The good news is that it's not expected to work on an iPhone!