Dexit

Somehow we missed this story in September, as did all the major international wireless rags, but it's still worth a mention. I am currently on business in Toronto, where a colleague showed me the commercialized Dexit RF-ID payment initiative.Dexit is an RF-ID close-contact tag that is intended for fast, small payments like coffee or a newspaper. Ideas like this could speed up the time we spend in lines, keep the hands of baristas cleaner (from not handling money), and reduce our need to carry change. The challenges, as always, are to reach a critical mass of users and merchants so that growth snowballs, AND to fend off competing offerings and the FUD they throw into the market even if they are slower or inferior. Dexit uses a stored value account, which can be topped-up from any Canadian bank for a $1.50 fee and the first top-up free. The initiative has backing from TD Canada Trust, National Bank and TELUS Mobility, and has launched in downtown Toronto at 22 national chains and 40 independent merchants. Dexit seems to be very similar to the MasterCard PayPass initiative, and the FeliCa effort from Sony and DoCoMo. What is lacking in these payment solutions is a strong mobility tie-in. The MasterCard and Dexit initiatives promote the attachment of the RF-ID tag to the mobile phone, but other than glue there is no relationship with the mobile service. At least there should be an SMS message after each RF-ID use to inform the customer of the current balance, and offer a hook for a top-up. In Korea, SK Telecom's Moneta solution is a much more developed mobile payment scheme, where the mobile network is an integral part of real-time mobile commerce transactions. Moneta chips are inserted into the phone, and allow RF-ID payment, Infrared payment, P2P, and over-the-air payments using either a stored value account, a Visa account, or even the phone bill. More importantly, SK Telecom has placed Moneta terminals at over 300,000 merchants.

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