Swipe and you're settled with near-field communication

Scrambling around for loose dirhams to pay a taxi driver could soon be an annoyance of the past - swiping your smartphone is the way forward.

New technology is set to arrive in the UAE allowing shoppers to pay for many things including taxis and eating out, all with their mobiles.

Using near-field-communication (NFC), a technology programme that connects smartphones with retailers, mobiles could eventually make cash and credit cards obsolete.

"What we've recognised is we're moving away from plastics," says Ed McLaughlin, the chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard Worldwide.

"What's going to happen is all your devices, your smartphone, your personal computer, your tablet, they are going to become e-commerce tools. It's much more convenient for [the shopper].

"It allows us to give a much better customer experience because I can now tell you your balance when you transact."

In other parts of the world, such as Japan, smartphones are already widely used to pay for goods and services in restaurants, cafes and on public transport.

In the UAE, which has yet to fully embrace traditional online retail, this goal might seem a stretch too far, but all the relevant parties, retailers, telecommunications companies, banks and payment providers are now working to make NFC technology a reality here.

"The global ecosystem for NFC payments is becoming more mature and by the end of year an expected mass of compatible [smartphones] will become a tipping point for adoption," says Farid Faraidooni, the chief commercial officer at du, which has carried out pilot tests with local customers using the new technology.

"With our NFC pilots we have successfully [put in] personalised credit cards into a mobile phone."

In October, Etisalat, MasterCard and Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, teamed up to release NFC-enabled products for shoppers in this country.

As a result, Etisalat is expected to start selling an NFC smartphone that can be used as a credit card in the second quarter of this year.

Nokia is also in talks with mobile operators throughout the Middle East to provide this technology, and Sony this week launched an NFC-enabled smartphone here, the Xperia S.

"Not only do you get the convenience of using your smartphone, it's also a better shopping experience because it's faster," says Mr McLaughlin. MasterCard has 300,000 "contactless" terminals worldwide branded Paypass.

NFC technology is built into a mobile phone, along with an individual's credit card or debit card details, and can be swiped on a payment system, similar to that used on rail systems in cities such as the London on the Underground and Hong Kong on the MTR.

Shoppers can move money from accounts and pay off credit cards all at the touch of a button. With e-wallet technology, a picture of the card can be available on screen to identify which one is being used. Shoppers can also flick through their virtual cards on screen to pay bills.

For security, a pin number is entered into the phone for a swipe payment. If you lose your phone, all the cards and details can be cancelled remotely and will be inaccessible to anyone else.

Despite the advances in NFC technology here, the cooperation between all parties needs to improve if payment via smartphone is to become widespread, experts say.

Currently, no one is bringing all the telecoms companies, banks, retailers and payment providers together to roll out a system for the UAE, so retailers only expect smartphone payment to become a reality for the majority of people in two to three years.

"There has to be consistency of a platform, which is not there at the moment," says Ashish Panjabi, the chief operating officer of Jacky's Electronics, a nationwide store. "The retailer is at the end point, so we cannot have multiple systems in place to manage five or six NFC payments."

The number of stores with smartphone terminals is also small, but growing. Visa estimates just 300 retailers have the technology in the Emirates.

"Sometimes it's a question of which comes first," says Sachin Bountra, the business development director of innovation for Visa in the Middle East. "The retailers and the acquiring banks have to invest in those [terminals] and naturally they want to see a return on that investment. They want to be confident phones are there to use."

Du estimates thousands of NFC-enabled mobiles will be available in the global market by the end of the year, but only a small proportion of those will be in the Emirates. Apple's iPhone 5 is rumoured to be NFC-enabled and is due out in June.

"We are seeing the trend as most of the smartphone manufacturers have either rolled out the NFC-enabled handset or are in process of doing the same," says Mr Faraidooni.

"More recently, there have been over 50 NFC-enabled models released in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which is a clear indication as to the mass adoption of NFC by handset manufacturers."

rjones@thenational.ae

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