contactless payment.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

Can someone please advise me on how to install contactless payment to my mother's phone. It might make life a little easier for her. I looked up websites but all they seem to do is advise..
I need to download the app itself.

[Buttonman]

I'm no tech god but is contactless payment not something that's on your card rather than on your phone? My First Direct card has the )))) symbol and the bumph says I can tap the card for small purchases without the need for a PIN or signature.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

True but it is also on your mobile phone to.

[Banners]

Assuming you mean you want to use a phone's NFC to pay in shops, as with a contactless debit or credit card, then I don't think you can do that in the UK yet.

There are proprietary ways you can send money with a phone  but they depend on what bank one is with.

[Frank]

It's not something you can do with just any phone or any bank just yet:

At the moment, contactless mobile payments are only available to customers of Orange and Barclaycard on one particular model of phone, although it's expected that many more will offer it soon. To learn more about the Orange and Barclaycard contactless handset visit http://www.sim-mobile.co.uk/contactless-nfc-payments-come-to-the-uk/

[amines2058]

I am positive that I have seen contactless payment stickers that can be stuck to the inside / outside of your phones case to enable it to become used in this manner.

A quick Google tells me this is called PayTag but again I am unsure id this is used by anyone except Barclays??

[betel_uk]

I've just started using that Pay Tag thing and it is on Barclaycard

(I'm no luddite, but I never got round to using contactless on my card - their marketing people seem to have hit on something though - they sent me the Pay Tag unsolicited, and somehow the idea of adding functionality to my phone "clicked" better than changing how I use my credit card. Tag was on that day. First use very next day. Now I'm annoyed when somewhere DOESN'T take contactless!)

[A.Cow]

Call me a luddite, but in my humble opinion NFC is a security nightmare waiting to happen.  People will be able to mug you just by brushing past with the right equipment.  Are you sure you want your mother exposed to that?

[Jim_Campbell]

Call me a luddite, but in my humble opinion NFC is a security nightmare waiting to happen.

I agree. And the infuriating thing is that the security issue is easily resolved but for the utter intransigence of the merchant service providers. All that's necessary is to flip the process round: I don't want a retailer to be able to pull payment from my phone, I should be able to push payment to the retailer. There's no good reason why it couldn't be done this way, other than the fact it gives control of the transaction to the consumer.

Cheers

Jim

[betel_uk]

One of my favorite Guardian articles... 14 years old now (and originally read on paper on a train, now found again with a couple of searches)... but I think it benefits from a few extra years hindsight

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/mar/23/onlinesupplement10