S.Korea announces major push to pay-by-phone services

(Reuters) - South Korea plans to install or upgrade 300,000 mobile payment checkouts at major retailers and transport services this year in its latest push in the potentially lucrative market as the likes of Google Inc and Apple Inc competitively introduce their own pay-by-phone services.

South Korea's communications commission also said on Monday that it would require mobile phone vendors to equip all smartphones with near field communication (NFC) technology, which allows wireless data exchanges at short range, letting people pay for goods, store electronic tickets, collect coupons by swiping a cell phone at a checkout or scanning tags on movie posters.

So far, only two NFC-enabled handsets have been offered in South Korea -- Samsung's Galaxy S II and Pantech's Vega Racer -- and a lack of standardised settlement checkouts at retailers, and disagreements over fee-sharing structure and controlling customer information have prevented the industry from taking off....read more

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