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The Battalion
Pag| 5 • Tuesday, November 18, 2003
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Giving cell phones the credit they’re due
New technology provides cellular phones with same buying power as credit cards
By Kyle Ross
The battalion
The things a cell phone can do
beyond interpersonal conversations
seems to be growing by the day.
Electronic gaming, photography, text
and voice messaging, phone books and
appointment books are just a few of the
extra tools currently made available.
Now, with the combined effort of
credit card companies and a South
Korean-based telecommunication cor
poration, a new
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technology has
been produced that
will give consumers
the ability to use
their cell phones to
pay for products.
Harex InfoTech,
the company
awarded the exclu
sive rights to mar
ket this system, has
been the leading
force in developing
the technology.
Damon Gonzalez,
in charge of business development for
Harex, says it was only a matter of
time before cell phones became a new
form of credit card.
“The meat of a credit card, debit
card or even a driver license is the
digital electronic information stored
in the magnetic strip on the back of
the card,” Gonzalez said. “The credit
card account data is stored electroni
cally in memory (of the cell phone)
the same way it is on the back of the
plastic card.”
Using an infrared beam, account
data can be sent wirelessly from a cell
phone to a small cashier terminal, com
pletely erasing the need for plastic
I think it would be nice
if I could use my cell phone
to pay for things. My only
worry is if it would be
secure.
cards. Rather than handing over a card
for swiping, users can type in a person
al password and press a button.
Financial transactions, performed
thousands of times a day, are simply
adjustments to memory banks in com
puters, Gonzalez said. It is this system
that makes it possible to think of cell
phones as credit cards.
“I think it would be nice if I could
use my cell phone to pay for things,”
said Mark Baughman, a junior electrical
engineering major. “My only worry is if
it would be secure.”
No need to
worry. Security did
not take a back
seat when develop
ing this technolo
gy, Gonzalez said.
The transmission
is encrypted, and
— Mark Baughman
junior electrical engineering major
the use of a pass
word ensures pro
tection against
fraudulent activity.
When the
phone-based card is
— used, the credit
expiration date or card
remains hidden.
card number,
verification value
allowing only the computer system to
see them.
“It’s the time-worn tale of giving
your plastic card to a waiter who copies
down the. information visible on the
card and later uses it to pay for a tropi
cal vacation,” Gonzales said. “Using a
cell phone eliminates such a worry.”
Disabling a lost or stolen cell phone
will also be preferable to losing a
credit card because noticing the loss
will be instantaneous.
“It is usually a matter of weeks before
most people realize they've lost their
plastic card, while losing your phone is
something you know about readily, often
within a few minutes,” Gonzalez said.
“In the first case, a thief has plenty of
time for mischief with your card.
However, in the latter it is possible to dis
able the electronic card before the thief
has a chance to get to the next store.”
While consumers may enjoy the
convenience and security of this tech
nology, people such as Sam
Boggan, store manager of The
Gap in College Station, are
more excited about the time it
will save them.
“Anything that streamlines
the checkout process is what
is desirable to us,” Boggan
said. “If this would cut back
checkout time and paperwork
and give us more time to do
things like actually sell the
product, it would be great.”
Baughman’s concerns with
security are an accurate sample
of the sort of feedback
already being
received by Gonzalez
as far as acceptance
of this technology.
“Our experience
with persuading peo
ple that mobile
phones could be
electric wallets suffi
cient for us anywhere
in the world has not
been met with reser
vations but with wild
enthusiasm,”
Gonzalez said. “It
hasn't been so much
a matter of ‘Why
should I do that?’ but rather a question
of ‘When?’ and ‘Where do I buy one of
these things?’”
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