The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) Tuesday announced four selected consortia of industry players that will implement a S$20 million (US$11 million) trial for mobile payment solutions, following a Mobile Payment Call for Collaboration (CFC) in May this year.
IDA will commit between S$7 million and S$12 million for the trials and the remaining funds will come from the participating industry players.
The trials are expected to run from the first quarter till the end of August 2002 and will involve collaboration among the three local mobile telecommunication operators – SingTel Mobile, MobileOne and StarHub Mobile, and at least 10,000 pilot mobile users.
The mobile payment solutions on trial will come in three forms – direct debit payment solutions, stored value solutions and credit card solutions.
Consortia members will conduct the trials in conjunction with various retail vendors such as Tricon, Cathay Cinema, Eng Wah Cinema and some shops in Suntec City.
Besides the local telcos, some of the members of the selected consortia include Visa, Nokia, NETS, DBS, Citibank, MasterCard International, National Library Board and Suntec City.
Following the award of the Mobile Payment CFC, Yong Ying-I, Chief Executive Officer for IDA, revealed yesterday two new Call for Collaboration (CFC) initiatives.
The Mobile Workforce Solutions CFC will concentrate on pilot projects for wireless technologies, while the Wireless Java Solutions CFC will engage in projects that develop interactive, multimedia and connected applications for a range of mobile devices based on the J2ME platform.