pay by phone
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NYC to trial mobile payment parking system, Lovely Rita looks for a new gig
Tired of burning your hard earned cash on parking fines? You might wanna move to New York City, where the Department of Transportation will soon begin testing a "pay by phone" parking system. The mobile payment technology, which has already been introduced in cities like Washington, DC and Atlanta, essentially allows drivers to pay for their parking spots without ever having to interact with those menacing, metallic meters. After registering online, users would be able to pay for curbside real estate by entering the number of the nearest meter and the amount of time they'd like to purchase into a customized app, or by texting it to the city's Department of Transportation. The system would also alert users whenever their allotted time is about to expire, allowing them to add more money directly from their handsets, rather than trudge back their cars. At this point, the plan is to roll out the pilot program to some 300 parking spots over the next few months, most likely in outer borough neighborhoods with plenty of commercial outlets and, presumably, automobiles.
Visa gets Bank of America on board for mobile payments trial, starting in New York next month
It didn't take long for Visa to react to the three-headed beast of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon entering the mobile payments arena. The world's foremost payment processing company has just announced that it's about to start a trial of its contactless payment system in partnership with Bank of America. Kicking off in the New York area this September and lasting through the end of the year, the scheme will most likely involve the MicroSD NFC communicator and In2Pay iPhone case that DeviceFidelity has been developing for Visa. No disclosures are being made on the size of this pilot scheme, though we're told that only a "select" group of employees and customers will be getting the mobile payment chips. Don't worry if you miss out on this one, though, as a similar trial is scheduled to begin in October with US Bancorp. That should give you enough time to turn yourself into a high-rolling select customer, right?
Apple patents on-phone shopping list, e-checkout
Apple has patented the idea of using a mobile device "to acquire pricing information for a shopping list of products," which basically sounds like an official version of SnapTell Explorer -- point the camera at something and then get a list of available prices for it. But this patent goes a step beyond that. It also suggests that a "mobile device" user could scan a full list of products, and then possibly even buy them directly from the phone. I imagine that's something like walking around a grocery store, scanning items as they go in your cart, and then checking out wirelessly from your phone. We've seen a "pay-by-phone" system in place before, but this sounds like a much larger system. And of course, security concerns would come along with it, so it'll probably be a while before you use your phone to check out in a major store. Still, even though there are lots of Apple patents coming down the pike that might never actually get implemented, I'd much rather deal with my phone than a line and a surly cashier.
