NFC Based Isis Payment System Coming Soon

With three major American wireless carriers supporting an NFC payment system called ‎Isis, Americans can settle their bills at retail stores with their mobile phones instead of ‎using physical credit cards soon.
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NFC, or near-field communications, allows two way communications between two ‎mobile devices when they’re placed about four inches apart. A similar technology is used ‎in the “mobile wallet” services as in Japan’s popular Mobile Felica system, where a ‎mobile phone can store encrypted credit-card data, transit pass information, or retail ‎coupons, and can transmit the same to readers located at stores or train stations with a tap.‎

An NFC may be considered to be like an RFID, which is smart on both sides. In the case ‎of RFID chips as in Mastercard’s credit cards, the chips only physically store data which ‎can be read or altered by card readers. By tapping the chip on a reader, a transaction gets ‎performed. In NFC, the RFID chip is also designed to do its own computing, like in a ‎mobile phone. So the phone itself downloads coupons, as an example, and puts the ‎coupon related data onto the RFID chip before it’s tapped.‎

RFID readers have been currently installed in places like New York City’s Duane Reade ‎pharmacies and San Francisco’s Muni stations, to read NFCs, through some software ‎reprogramming. In the case of other retail outlets and transit systems, new RFID/NFC ‎hardware has to be provided. Existing U.S. mobile phones cannot work with NFC. An ‎RFID hardware and reader have to be built into the phone, which requires additional ‎radio and other hardware. Needless to say, to adopt NFC, every American has to ‎purchase a new compatible phone.‎

The prototype mobile devices embedding NFC compliant features, being developed by ‎Google and RIM, are still in development.‎