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China Brewing Mobile Payment Standard
[August 31, 2010]

China Brewing Mobile Payment Standard


SHENZHEN, Aug 31, 2010 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- The Ministry of Information Technology and Industry is looking to rally its nascent mobile payment industry around a single technology standard with the hope of cashing in on the world's largest mobile population.



The move would quell a long-simmering debate about the merits of using local versus global technologies and focus the enormous resources of the country's telecom operators and banks on accelerating the rollout of handsets and point-of-sale terminals.

Mobile payment is slowly gaining traction in China, with systems already in place in top-tier cities for subways, supermarkets, convenience stories, cafes, and fast food chains. China's mobile payment market size is estimated at USD 417 million in 2010, up 45% from 2009. Users are expected to nearly double to 150 million. These numbers mostly reflect niche forms of mobile payment, from IC embedded traffic cards to online payments made from a handset.


The country's largest wireless carrier, China Mobile Ltd. (SEHK: 0941 and NYSE: CHL), is indicating it will suspend deployment of a proprietary system based on a standalone 2.4GHz RF-SIM card. Its rival, China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (NYSE: CHU, SEHK: 0762, and SHSE: 600050), has adopted Near Field Communication (NFC), an international standard based on the 13.56MHz frequency.

Source: www.cnstock.com (August 31, 2010)

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