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More than three-quarters of participants in a recent trial of Near Field Communication mobile payment and ticketing in London say they would use a contactless service on their mobile phones if available, suggest the results of a six-month trial released Tuesday by mobile operator O2. About 90% of the 500 trial participants expressed satisfaction with NFC technology, according to O2. All 500 users could tap their phones to pay fares on buses and underground trains using London's Oyster fare-collection application. Of those, nearly half also could tap their phones to pay for purchases at stores using the Visa payWave application issued by United Kingdom-based Barclaycard. The users received £200 (US$357 or 246 euros) in credit to spend with the payment application. "The consumers loved it," says Claire Maslen, head of Near Field Communication at O2. "We had people at the end of the trial begging to keep their phones, with Oyster in particular." She was speaking at a press conference in London for the official release of the results of the trial, which ended in May. About two-thirds of users said they found tapping the phones more convenient than using Oyster cards, and about 22% said they increased their number of trips on London's subway trains. In all, users tapped their phones for 50,000 trips on the London Underground during the trial. About 87% of respondents said the availability of the Oyster service would influence their choice of mobile phones. And while more than two-thirds of users said they would like to have the Barclaycard application on their phones in the future, only 47% said that would influence their choice of phones. Neither O2 nor Barclaycard released the number of retail transactions trial users conducted with the phones. But CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments has learned the number of transactions was somewhat disappointing, especially considering organizers gave the Barclaycard customers participating in the trial £200 pounds to spend. The payment transactions would have increased "if there was wider acceptance of the payment method," Maslen tells Cards&Payments. Users could tap to pay at the same terminals that accept contactless cards–perhaps a few thousand in the London area. No large merchant chain yet accepts contactless in the United Kingdom. Moreover, despite the high satisfaction rates, O2 and other mobile operators will not be rolling out NFC services anytime soon. They and other service providers have yet to establish a business case for NFC, and few NFC handsets are available. But O2 said it has invited competing telecommunications firms and service providers to form a task force to help clear the way for an eventual rollout of the technology in the UK.
