2004-13-Jan

Norwegian telco Telenor has teamed up with the country’s national airline to enable travellers to purchase flight tickets via their mobile handsets. Telenor is using an SMS-based system to allow mobile users to search for available flights and then book and pay for them all from their mobile phone.

Users will receive an SMS receipt of their booking that will be accepted at the check-in for their flight.

Telenor Mobil already has 500,000 registered users of its existing mobile commerce services but these are focused on small payments for vending machine services and cinema tickets. Using mobile phones to take large payments represents a major step for both Telenor and the mobile commerce industry in general.

While the Asia Pacific region, led by Japan and South Korea, continues to lead in terms of the deployment and take-up of mobile commerce services, in the coming years Europe is expected to dominate the market for contactless payments in the transport industry.

According to the findings of the recently published report, Mobile Proximity Payment Services, there will be 60 million users of transport-related mobile payments services in Europe by 2010 as compared to less than 30 million in Japan and South Korea. The market for mobile transactions is expected to be worth just over US$380 billion by 2010.

Search For More Info

Web www.cellular.co.za