Tech Blog

[#1]

The idea behind this may seem a bit old, but in practice, ponying up cash from one mobile device to another is about to get a lot easier. Paypal unveiled a service that will do just that — tap two phones together that have Near Field Communications (NFC) chips built-in and the transaction is done.

The app that will enable this won’t be out till later this summer and will only work on Google’s Nexus S smartphone, the only Android phone that has an NFC chip inside. Naturally, because it’s the only phone, the whole mobile-to-mobile payment scenario can only work when two users both have the Nexus S.

This will change in time, of course, because NFC is slated to become bigger and bigger in the next few years, as Canadians slowly transition from paying with cash or plastic to waving a phone to make payments. This sort of thing has been going on in Japan for years, so it’s not inherently new, but it is something to look forward to.

The idea behind this isn’t just to make payments at retail stores like Future Shop, but also to split restaurant bills easily, redeem coupons already stored on the phone and to send money to just about anyone at anytime.

Using services like Canadian-made Zoompass, it’s become infinitely easier to send mobile payments and remittances to faraway lands, but doing something like this in a very personal, localized way is altogether different.

There’s still no word on whether the iPhone 5 (or whatever it’ll be called) or new handsets from RIM and other manufacturers will have NFC chips built-in, but some analysts have said that the bigger push towards NFC-enabled phones is likely to come in 2012.