EZ-Link and StarHub launch NFC public trial
ConvergenceAsia staff
18/10/2007

EZ-Link and StarHub has announced that they have completed a series of internal trials. With over 20,000 ez-link payment acceptance points in both the public transport and retail sectors, this trial would be among the largest of its kind in the world and will be the first public trial in Singapore.

EZ-Link and StarHub will distribute the handsets for a 6-month trial to their customers from the 18th to 21st of October 2007. These customers have been pre-selected from over 2,600 applicants who had participated in a short NFC public survey conducted online.

These trialists will have an opportunity to experience the convenience of using the NFC phone for payments and as a medium to download useful as well as promotional information from smart posters. Their feedback will be essential in understanding behavioral patterns and user acceptance of the NFC phone which will be one of the critical factors in considering introducing the service on a commercial basis.

"We are very pleased with the progress of this collaboration with StarHub and other partners, each of whom has played a critical role to enable us to successfully complete the internal trials within a short period of time and obtain information necessary to proceed to the next stage - the public trial. Given that this is the first-of-its-kind public trial in Singapore, we are sure that it will excite the public and generate the type of response and feedback we need, and take us another step towards new payment possibilities for Singapore," said Nicholas Lee, Senior Vice President of Business and Technology at EZ-Link.

"The feedback from our trialists will help us understand consumer behaviour toward the NFC technology and provide valuable inputs as we develop new and exciting applications and services that utilise the technology," said Anil Nihalani, Vice President of StarHub's Mobile Services.

The EZ-Link-StarHub partnership aims to integrate the ez-link purse into a mobile phone with NFC, a short-range wireless technology that enables contact-less applications. In doing so, they will turn these phones into payment devices that could soon be accepted at over 20,000 ez-link terminals on buses, trains and at retail locations that accept ez-link payment. Besides being able to use their NFC-enabled mobile phones as a means of payment at all ez-link acceptance points, users could also use them for other innovative 'contact-less' mobile phone applications.

At the Partners Event held at The Arts House to celebrate the successful launch of the NFC Phone trial were technology partners iWOW, Sony and NXP along with other participating partners Cassis International, Citibank, ClearChannel, Golden Village, the Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA), SMRT Media, ViVOtech and Wisma Atria.

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