The trials were conducted in the Klang Valley and Kuala Lumpur from October 2007 until early last month with partners Maybank, Visa International, Touch ‘n Go, RapidKL and Nokia. The trials, which involved 100 participants, used Nokia 6131 NFC phone that measures the technical capabilities of NFC-enabled payment methods and the user acceptance of the service.

The participants were able to test the NFC-enabled dual mobile payment service at merchants with Visa payWave readers and more than 3,000 Touch ‘n Go terminals, including ones placed in LRT stations, RapidKL buses in the Klang Valley and highway toll booths.

According to Maxis’ chief operating officer Jon Eddy Abdullah, with the NFC trials, Maxis joins a pioneering group of mobile operators worldwide which have conducted or are conducting NFC Trials.

Maxis’ NFC trial is also the nation’s first to combine credit card and transport service, he said.

“Commercial launch is slotted within the second half of this year, when there are more enabled phones,” revealed Eddy.

He said Maxis currently has 2.7 million active data users across its 2G and 3G networks. He added that the company focuses on six areas of data – browsing, games, mobile TV, music, messaging and mobile commerce.

Nokia’s senior manager Jarkko Sevanto said NFC business development referred to an ABI research on NFC-enabled handset shipments in 2007 which projected upward trend beginning from 2008.

He said, “Looking at these trends, there will be clearly an increase in the shipment of NFC handsets. We also anticipate more commercial launches of NFC service this year and in 2009.”

He explained that though the NFC technology – which is an evolution of contactless and short range RFID technologies – requires an antenna to be built into the phone, the extra component will not affect the phone’s form factor.

“When we built the NFC capability into the original Nokia 6131, we managed to include the hardware without having to change the phone’s form factor,” said Sevanto.

NFC enables users to replace their credit and travel cards, get information by touching smart posters and share content between phones and paired devices. “The real benefit comes when you have more than just one card, instead of carrying them all, you carry only your mobile phone.”

As for content sharing, he cited exchanging of business cards can be as quickly as a tap.

Sevanto also said for users, the experience will be easy and convenient. “You don’t need to know if it is transferred by Bluetooth or over-the-air, you instantaneously get feedback after the tap.”

As for security, he added that users need to touch the phone and confirm by pressing Yes or Proceed button before anything can happen.

“The user is able to employ a passcode to be keyed in each time they want to do a transaction. In any case without the passcode, the NFC user interface will always ask for confirmation before any data is streamed into the phone.”

Maxis’ head of product & new businesses Nikkolai Dobberstein said NFC infrastructure rollouts are advancing across the globe. He added that Asia is actually leading with mature contact-less credit card and transit purse rollout taking place in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

Malaysia is also quite advanced, he said. According to Maybankard Market Intelligence report in 2007 for Visa payWave, there are 4,000 readers, 800,000 cards and 3,300 merchants while MasterCard Paypass has similarly extensive rollouts. As for contactless MiFare E-Purse (Touch ‘n Go), there are 2.6 million active cards being used at more than 3,000 touch points.

Dobberstein said Maxis as the provider of mobile infrastructure has a nice partnership with Nokia, Maybank, Touch ‘n Go and RapidKL.

“Maxis will drive the development of standardised mobile NFC eco-system in Malaysia to give customers an easy-to-access and easy-to-use mobile payment service.”