Japanese payment card company JCB has begun a three month pilot of its JCBeam service which allows customers to make contactless payments using mobile phones featuring infrared transmission ports.
JCB says about 100 participants, primarily its employees, will trial the technology. Participants will download a payments application and credit card data on to NTT DoCoMo 505i phones, which are equipped with the infrared ports.
Customers will able to use the contactless technology to pay for purchases at locations around JCB's headquarters where point-of-sale terminals have been equipped with an infrared interface.
Haruaki Goto at JCB's strategic market development department, says: "Ongoing enhancements in the infrastructure and transaction regulations in Japan, as well as the fact that introducing IR (infrared) has minimal impact on our merchants, gives mobile infrared the potential to open up new markets to credit payment."
Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo began testing infrared payments over its hand sets last year. The company teamed with card companies Visa International, Nippon Shinpan, OMC Card and AEON Credit.