The evolution of the mobile wallet has been a slow one, despite the promise of being able to load cash and credit onto a handset, and use it as a swipecard to make small purchases, as well as a gadget to process larger banking transactions. However, the success of mobile money in Japan is starting to revive interest, and this is yet another area where both Qualcomm and Intel are aiming to gain significant influence over the devices and infrastructure.
Last month Qualcomm outlined its plans to develop back end infrastructure and managed services for operators offering mobile payments, on the back of its purchase of Firethorn, a service enabler that has partnerships with Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Now, at its Developer Forum last week, Intel has set out its own stall, focusing on smartcards that could be integrated into phones and other devices, and on the infrastructure to support wireless wallets.
Intel’s People and Practises Research group has been working for the past year on frameworks to underpin wireless wallet applications, and is vocal about the need to unify the rapidly proliferating digital money formats ‘ characteristically for Intel, pushing its own ideas and technologies as the solution to fragmentation. The researchers pointed out that for mobile wallets to take off, faster transaction processing is required, and frameworks need to be standardized, but also to embrace non-traditional forms of money such as airmiles or PayPal credits.
The head of the team, researcher Scott Mainwaring, said the company was “working on designs to expand our imagination about what money might look and feel like in the future’, in its Personal Digital Money project. As well as looking at its own technologies, the initiative will pool results from many electronic cash and smartcard projects round the world, and try to integrate them with a common set of design techniques, formats and protocols. Examples the team has studied include Japan, the boom in mobile payments and credits in the Chinese gambling sector, and the widespread use of cellphone-based money transfer in some African countries like Kenya (Vodafone has been pushing this as an alternative to established transfer networks like Western Union, which require customers to visit offices, and is even considering bringing the service to the UK to serve new immigrant groups).
The more diverse digital money becomes, the more users will like it, according to Intel, but all electronic cash and credit types need to be handled in the same way, securely and rapidly, and from a wide range of devices.
Intel’s e-cash project is slated to last at least another year, at which time the Intel unit will recommend the best electronic infrastructure for future wireless wallets, and try to push this into the relevant mobile, internet and banking standards bodies.