The project "touch'n pay" demonstrates the usage of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for self service shopping.
The project "touch'n pay" demonstrates the usage of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for self service shopping.
By the joint project touch'n pay, operated by NEXPERTS, e24 and other industrial partners plus the University of Applied Science from Northwest Switzerland, from December 2009 customers can shop for goods and services by a simple touch with their NFC enabled mobile phone during a several month field trial.
80 customers from the Zurich region will be equipped with an NFC enabled mobile phone that eases the shopping process in farmer shops significantly. As these self marketing farmers do not have a usual PoS infrastructure and are operated without assisting personal in the shop, the NFC mobile phone becomes the electronic shopping basket, cash point and access key. The shopper simply touches the price tag, on which an NFC tags stores the item and price information. A shopping basket application on the mobile phone sums up all articles and by a touch to the "checkout" tag the electronic payment process will be initiated.
Furthermore the NFC enabled customers can access to the farmer's shop around the clock by opening the door-lock cylinder with a touch by their mobile phone.
The project has been initiated by NEXPERTS from Hagenberg, Austria together with e24 from Zurich, Switzerland. It is supported by SIX Multi Solutions, the provider of the secure payment service Mobile Buy, which links mobile-phone purchases to Visa and MasterCard credit cards, Winter and Alliera. Legic provided the contactless smart card technology and their partner SEA the NFC enabled door lock cylinders. The mobile lab from advertising agency transformer supports the end-user communication for the project.
The backend systems with deposited means of payment like PostFinance, Visa or MasterCard is operated by e24. NEXPERTS developed all applications on the mobile phone (Java MIDlet and Secure Element Applet), Winter from Unterschleissheim near Munich provides the over-the-air provisioning and personalization services. SMS services are initiated by Alliera's Communication Suite.
All experiences and results from the project will be collected and analyzed by the University of Applied Sciences from Northwest Switzerland to retrieve important information for a later real operation.