By Star Chang, posted Nov 4, 2011 at 6:39 PM, 1,101 views,

SDpass Turns Any Smartphones Into E-wallet (Video)

Public transportation in China Beijing just got easier, thanks to a revolutionary new product called SDpass. It allows Chinese residents to use their mobile phones to instantly pay for bus and subway rides. With SDpass, users can easily perform near-field payments and remote payments, all without changing their mobile handset. This solution will turns an ordinary mobile phone into a veritable e-purse and it might sets a new milestone for mobile payment in China …

The SDpass is a new generation mobile payment products made by a company called Watchdata. It looks no different than an ordinary micro SD card, but it has a thin antenna attached to it. The SDpass dual interface have both contact and contactless features. Its contact interface performs advanced SD storage functions while the contactless interface performs additional radio frequency card functions. The SDpass thus combines the features of both storage card and integrated circuit card together, allowing a mobile phone to function as both a telecommunications device as well as a municipal transportation and retail payment card.

The greatest advantage of SDpass is allowing users to make fast, easy mobile payments without having to change their mobile handset or phone number. All they need is a mobile device which build-in micro SD card slot and running KJava or Andriod OS. Combine with the dedicate mobile app, users can conveniently check their balance and top up value at anytime, anywhere. The solution also meets user needs for shopping online and supports remote payments too. SDpass is now selling at Beijing for $158 yuan (US$24.9), with 2GB of storage and extra free $10 yuan store-value.

The new system was made possible through a collaboration with Beijing Municipal Administration and Communications Card Company, which has introduced the store-value contactless smart card several years ago, for the use of public transportation in Beijing. The existing platform systems with SDpass technology allows Chinese consumers to enjoy the convenience of mobile payment. The transactions can be made seamlessly at a variety of establishments.

We know there are a lot of mobile phones out there which still doesn’t support NFC (Near field communication). We believe SDpass might only serve a small group of audience because mobile payment is not mature in China market yet. Chinese iPhone users are probably out for this too, since no model of iPhone features a memory card slot. The folks in Taiwan are smarter on this, they came out a cover sleeve to attach with the iPhone to make it NFC-enabled. In the mean time, the SDpass surpports quite a lot of smartphone devices, this include those mainstream models from HTC, Samusung, Motorola and SONY Ericsson (list here). SDpass might be a clever idea for those existing phone user but the crappy installation doesn’t really look good to some people, and we are not sure how good is the overall security system.

Source: ZOL China, Beijing Times (in Chinese), Watchdata

.