Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 22, 2004, (JCN Newswire)–JCB Co., Ltd., the international payment brand, is offering a trial service for Mobile Offica™, a contactless chip and mobile solution that offers corporations cashless payment and office access control functions through ‘NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode® FeliCa Preview Service’ for mobile phones. The trial service, available until July 2004, marks the first time that a credit card payment service has been made available for mobile phones with a contactless chip in Japan.

JCB’s Offica solution is designed to meet the increasing security needs of corporations and the increasing demands for employee convenience and usability. Built around Sony’s widely-used FeliCa contactless IC chip technology, Offica offers a diverse menu of functions including office access control, employee attendance tracking and network authentication as well as a cashless purchasing function that is more advanced than older prepaid card systems.

Corporate users are free to choose the applications that will serve them best and customize the solution to their needs. The Offica solution offers postpayment capabilities, linking the employee’s spending at the office to his or her own credit card account. This allows employees to earn loyalty points on office-related purchases, and eliminates the burden on companies of administering cash and equipment to load value onto cards.

JCB’s Mobile Offica™ offers further advantages to conventional plastic card systems. Employees can monitor outstanding balances and view a detailed history of transactions on their mobile phone displays with “JCB Office Purchase Inquiry”, a downloadable java-based application, without having to use a separate card reader, for example. JCB is now examining the possibility of adding a mobile on-line function to request an increase in credit limit for even more value-added service.

“Payment solutions for the future must take advantage of the latest chip and information technology,” said Takahiro Shimokawa, Vice President of Advanced Technologies at JCB. “Functionality will be provided via the media most suited to the application–whether that is conventional plastic cards, mobile phones, hand-held PDAs or even key chains. Payment systems that capture the market will be those that offer the most effective solution for each individual situation. This is why JCB is moving ahead with the development of payment solutions using new devices and new technologies that are now emerging throughout the market.”

The advantages of IC chip technology will become even more marked in the future, particularly in the corporate environment where the limited range of equipment and infrastructure makes flexible and innovative use of the chip easier to implement. JCB’s solutions, including the new Mobile Offica™, offer a technological edge that complement its existing international credit card payment system infrastructure.

i-mode and i-appli are registered trademarks of NTT DoCoMo, Inc.

FeliCa is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation.