Want to make a payment using your mobile phone and NFC (near field communications) but don’t have the feature built into your mobile phone? Well, the partnership between First Data and Tyfone might be able to offer you something. Using Tyfone’s SideTap card, they are able to come up with a microSD card that doubles up as a NFC payment device. In terms of the cost, there is good news as it apparently costs about the same as a regular memory card of the same capacity. With NFC being moved to memory cards instead of phones, phone manufacturers should have an easier time as they won’t have to worry about adding on the extra feature to phones, but consumers will still be able to get the feature if desired, assuming the device uses a microSD card of course. These memory cards are slated to hit the market in the second half of 2010, and trials are scheduled to begin somewhere in the middle of the year.
Filed in . Read more about Microsd and Mobile Payments.