News
NFC Entering Commercial Application in China
2007 was the year when China witnessed the launching of NFC. Starting from last August, NFC chip-embedded cell phone of Nokia 6131i was officially put on sale in the some cities of Beijing, Xiamen, Guangzhou in China. This model of cell phone can be used to buy transit tickets and pay for the shopping at some department stores when the transit card of the urban transit system is downloaded to the phone and one prepaid fee account is registered.
It is exciting to know that NFC has seen its commercial use in this huge potential market of China. At present, in China there are over dozen millions of Chinese people use the contactless urban transit “ all-in-one “ cards, among the total issuance, 13 million cards issued in Beijing, 6 million in Guangzhou and 1.1 million in Xiamen. The commercial implementation between Nokia and these three cities marks the prelude of NFC use in China.
Entering 2008, we have good and exciting news for NFC application in China, that is China Unionpay has joined hands with five local commercial banks ( ICBC Shanghai, BOC Shanghai, Communication Bank of China, Industrial Development Bank and Shenzhen Development ) launch the mobile payment business based on NFC mobile phones in Shanghai.
800 credit card holders of these five banks are invited to use NFC cell phones of Nokia 6131i in the trial consumptions at the merchant shops like Oushang Chain Stores, Yaohan Shopping Mall in the key commercial centers at Lujiazue, Wujiaochang and Sichuan North Road in Shanghai. The POS terminals are introduced with NFC contactless bankcard payment technology. There are over 300 POS terminals installed by China Unionpay in Shanghai.
According to the sources of China Mobile, NFC contactless payment business will be launched in Chongqing City which is jointly in partnership with Bank of China, China Mobile Chongqing and other partnering companies in 2008.
Another source of news from China Unicom, two more cities of Shenzhen and Chongqing are selected to launch the NFC pilots in 2008. And by March, 2008, the operation platform based on NFC payment will be ready and put into tests. As planned by the beginning of Olympic Games Beijing, the testing pilots in the above cities shall be completed and put into commercial use.
Considering this hot trend of NFC application in China and the good success of the 1st NFC Asia Pacific Summit last May in 2007, the organizers of Smart Card Federation of China (SCFC ) and AIT Events have won the continuous endorsement from NFC Forum to launch the 2nd NFC AP Summit on a road show in Beijing and Shanghai in March, 2008. This Summit will start at China World Hotel in Beijing on March 21 – 22 and move to Shanghai Mart Expo Center on March 27 – 28, 2008.
The theme of this Summit is NFC Opens the New Payment Business, addressing the issues of updated global trend of NFC, its applications and development in Asian region and the business case in Shanghai as well as its technical topics of OTA, the card management etc.
For the speakers at this Summit, the Organizers will invite the leading mobile operators from China Mobile, China Unicom, French Telecom and Thai True Group, and the card issuers from China Unionpay, Mastercard, VISA, JCB to make presentations. The leading vendors are invited from Nokia, Motorola, INSIDE Contactless, NXP, Watchdata, Shanghai COSW, Venyon and Vivotech to join as the industrial speakers.
The Summit is the only and premier event endorsed by NFC Forum in China. The Spokesperson, Mr. Patrick Henzen will make keynotes at the events for two cities. It is expected that this Summit will create a strong networking promotion for the related industrial players and institutes to share and exchange the NFC information and technical views on the technical implementation and market direction both in China and in Asia for the coming years.
For more details of the Summit, please visit www.nfc-china.net/tem.asp or
Email us at: frank.xu@263.net.cn