Innovation and tradition for mobile shoppers at farmer’s grocery stores
The project “touch’n pay” demonstrates the usage of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for Self Service Shopping.
Zurich, December 15, 2009–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 Point of Sale 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 GmbH from Hagenberg, Austria together with e24 AG from Zurich, Switzerland. It is supported by SIX Multi Solutions AG, the provider of the secure payment service Mobile Buy, which links mobile-phone purchases to Visa and MasterCard credit cards, Winter AG and Alliera AG. 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 AG from Unterschleissheim near Munich provides the OTA (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.
By the «touch’n pay» Initiative the project partners plan to stimulate the Swiss industry for acting in the area of NFC deployments.
“NFC Users are an important target group for contactless payment and our customers of tomorrow. To experience how our products are used is of great interest for us to optimize our services better for the customer needs”
says Alexander Schümperli, CEO, e24 AG.
Kurt Schmid, CEO from NEXPERTS adds: “For NEXPERTS as expert in the area of NFC solutions this project is extremely interesting and trendsetting. In a few years contactless payment will be a commodity. The experience gathered from this project will us help to streamline the user interfaces for a Mobile Wallet.”
“End Users can not only use the NFC phone for cashless self service shopping but also as door key, ticket or identity credential for memberships. The new technology opens various possibilities to ease the daily life. This project will benefit understanding this vision”, adds Urs Andrin Lampe, Vice President Product Marketing & New Business, LEGIC.
Press inquiries
Marcel Brand
Manager Marketing Communications
LEGIC Identsystems LTD
Tel: +41 44 933 6464
mbrand@legic.com
About NEXPERTS
NEXPERTS is a solutions provider using mobile contactless technology for physical and logical access, mobile marketing as well as payment, ticketing and couponing applications.
The company, based in Hagenberg, Austria, focuses on complete solution packages to connect businesses to customers through the use of mobile contactless technology. NEXPERTS offers NFC packages, platforms and tools for rapid application development as well as ready to use solutions for event management, mobile data acquisition, vouchering and other application specific use of mobile technology.
NEXPERTS is NFC Forum Member and partners with the key players in the NFC ecosystem.
For more information visit the website:
http://www.nexperts.com
About e24
- e24 AG–Swiss Market leader for mobile payments
- e24 AG is one of the leading mobile application und service providers in Switzerland. The company was founded in 2007 and offers under the brands ePark24, ePay24, MobileAccess and MobileBanking comprehensive mobile solutions.
- http://www.e-24.ch
About Winter AG
WINTER AG is a leading supplier of chip cards and solutions for applications in the field of modern security concepts. The company offers a range of products that focuses in particular on cards for the banking, IT/access, health and customer loyalty sectors. Besides the above-mentioned product range, Winter AG directs its attention mainly to associated services such as card finishing and photo capture and also personalisation, letter shops, mailings and kiosk systems. Flexible implementation of customer requirements, tailored products and project-orientated work are among the factors in WINTER AG’s success. The company has all the relevant security certifications from leading card organisations Visa and MasterCard, maintains a quality management system that is certified to DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 and has product certification issued by Gematik for the manufacture of eGK electronic healthcare cards.
About LEGIC Identsystems Ltd
LEGIC Identsystems Ltd, with headquarters in Switzerland, is the world leader in the design and manufacture of 13.56 MHz contactless smart card technology. The LEGIC product portfolio includes highly integrated LEGIC RF Standard, ISO 15693 and ISO 14443 compliant read/write chip sets, security modules and transponder chips.
LEGIC Identsystems currently works with over 200 external co-operation partners world-wide who offer compatible LEGIC all-in-one-card applications including access control, e-payment, parking, e-ticketing and other multiapplications. More than 2 million readers and over 100 million credentials are successfully integrated in more than 60,000 work and leisure places worldwide.