singapore

Ez-Link Pte, the agency that manages Singapore’s contactless transit cards, plans to put the application on NFC mobile phones for a trial starting in January, Card Technology has learned.

Ez-Link, part of the Land Transport Authority, will join transit agencies or their card-issuing units in Germany, China, France and the United States that have run tests allowing commuters to tap their handsets to cover transit fares or which plan to do so in the coming weeks.

Ez-Link intends to have its contactless fare-collection application–used on roughly 6 million ez-link cards–downloaded over the mobile network and onto Samsung model X700 NFC phones. A source says the ez-link application will be stored on a secure chip embedded in the handsets and connected to the NFC chip. Singapore-based smart card company Cassis International will handle the downloads.

It may be the first over-the-air download of a transit-ticketing application to NFC handsets. The NFC fare-collection trials in Germany and China involve preloaded applications. In France, a trial scheduled to start early next week on the Paris Métro and SNCF commuter trains will allow subscribers of mobile network operator Bouygues Telecom and, later, Orange and SFR, to download transit passes over the air, but not the application itself.

And MasterCard Worldwide is now recruiting users for a trial of contactless mobile payment that can be used to cover fares on a line of the New York subway system, but it is not clear whether the MasterCard PayPass application will be downloaded over the air. Citibank and mobile operator Cingular Wireless are involved in the trial.

Personalizing NFC phones in the field is considered vital to the success of NFC. In announced trials, organizers have so far downloaded a loyalty application in China and are sending a PayPass prepaid debit application via the network to phones in Dallas, Texas, in a trial involving convenience store chain 7-Eleven.

Singapore’s ez-link cards also can be used to make purchases with some merchants on the island nation, and the NFC trial likely will extend to retail payment. (2006-11-09)