Paying for services from the cell phone
DoCoMo has come up with an interesting an novel way to let its customers pay for everyday items using their cell phone.
A new service in Thailand will allow customers to pay for their online shopping, pay their gas bills, buy drinks at vending machines and more. It doesn’t use anything fancy like the chips in FOMA phones but instead works by issuing the user with a dedicated phone number which the user can call and, via an automated voice system, authorise payments.
The service is provided as a joint venture between DoCoMo, AIS Thailand and mPAY, the online mobile payments system that provides this phone number interface.
This is a great example of ways in which existing technology is being leveraged to create useful applications and value for handset users