Category — mobile payments

Last week I was invited to participate in a contactless payment trial from Zoompass.

All I had to do was affix their wireless payment sticker tag (as seen in the picture to the right) to my mobile phone and look for the MasterCard contactless reader at my local Tim Hortons, Second Cup, McDonalds or Petro Canada.

The Tag allows me to tap my mobile device on a PayPass reader at the checkout, just like a PayPass-enabled credit card, to pay directly from my Zoompass account.

Today I went specifically to a Second Cup to give this a test drive and was amazed at how easy it was.  All I had to do was bring my phone very close to the PayPass reader and faster than you can say skinny latte the purchase was authorized.

The two women working behind the counter were amazed at this and asked out loud what will the iphone do next? When I told them it was actually a sticker and not an App they suggested that instead of putting it on your mobile phone, what about on a watch or some other fashion accessory.

They raise a good point.

Even though the intention was that the sticker would go on your phone, it will be interesting to hear how others in this trial end up using it.  The sticker is actually embedded with an NFC (near field communications) chip that emits a secure low frequency and short wave radio signal to the POS system to make it work as a contactless payment system.

The sticker tag is meant to be an intermediate or transition technology until all mobile devices come with a NFC chip already embedded inside their case.

Unlike some very early versions of the Zoompass mobile payment system, this was incredibly easy to use and understand.  I checked my balance on my iphone Zoompass App immediately following my purchase and my current balance was already updated.

I’m curious to see how durable the sticker is – but that’s something I’ll report back on in about three months when the trial is expected to end.

A week after posting my initial review of the beta zoompass mobile payment system, they have just released a native iPhone app as well.

One interesting tweak to the iPhone implementation is that it’s designed to synch a Zoompass account with the contacts already in your iPhone, so users can Zoom money to anyone in their address book with just a few pinches, pulls, or clicks.

I downloaded the app this morning and can report that the experience is delightfully better than on their dotmobi site (which to be fair was made for the lowest common denominator phones) or by trying to browse their desktop version in my mobile browser. I was even able to reset my pin number quickly & easily without having to jump to my SMS screen or having to go the desktop web.

The full press release can be found here.

Responses to my review and others on the interweb on the Zoompass system has been quick and positive from the both the team at Zoompass and the agency handling their PR.

They’ve received some good feedback and suggestions through their initial beta phase and are busy working on incorporating many of them.

One of my suggestions may even become known as the “phryl” button on the site – although I’m pretty sure they were just kidding

Mobile credit card payments, also known as m-payments, are expected to rise in popularity within the next several years. Surprisingly, a lot of people are unaware of this expanding technology, despite the fact that it can make many of our lives much easier.

M-payments are point of sale transactions that can be made between a mobile device and a contactless reader. If you are in a restaurant that supports m-payment, for example, you can settle your bill from your table in seconds. Although m-payment has only been tested in North America on a trial basis, the technology is being readily used in parts of Asia and Europe.

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