Jan Michael Hess, CEO Mobile Economy GmbH and Green Venture Summit
Twitter: @mobiliser
Building the Cashless Society
Lessons from the cashless FeliCa Economy in Japan
‹Japan’s reality is our future›
In September 2010 the 3G penetration in Japan was 98%, i.e. mobile data is cheap and therefore everybody uses it extensely.
Introduction to FeliCa
– Mobile FeliCa: Felicity Card = Happiness Card = Convenience Card
– It’s a contactless RFID smartcard from Sony
– It’s a mobile phone with built-in smartcard
– De factor NFC (Near Field Communication) standard in Japan
– Secure transaction in 0.1 seconds with 10cm range
– FeliCa = Money, information, marketing bonus points, personal ID and keys
– Mobile FeliCa = secure multi-applications platform with OTA (over the air) connection
All carriers try to find new revenue sources, e.g. BitWallet. NTT docomo invented «iD» and ‹Oasifu Keitai› = Mobile Wallet by NTT DoCoMo
The TSM is DoCoMo’s trusted service manager that offers the secure storing for the FeliCa networks. There’s only one in Japan and that position is potentially very powerful. The other carriers had to set with DoCoMo’s dominance. But now Apple may come up with a competing model with security offered on the SIM card.
In 2010 Japan is about 6 years ahead of the German mobile marketplace in terms of commercialising mobile NFC.
Bild FeliCa Economy Growth and Ecosystem Expansion
There are several prepaid type services such as BitWallet, East Japan Railways, 7&I Holdings, etc as well as postpaid services. DoCoMo, JCB, Visa.
ANA offers the transfer of flying miles to real money via FeliCa.
McDonalds offers a combination of couponing, preordering and payment.
The success is due to the combination of an offline and online strategy on the mobile and a harmonized user terminal, i.e. only one supplier.
The presentation was hosted by IBM Innovation Center for Mobile Monday.
Mobile Monday Switzerland’s Twitter profile and the realtime Twitter stream.
Update 3.11.2010:
Blog post reviews after the conference on Paper.li