Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Korea’s KT Corp have stepped up their cooperation on NFC-based mobile payment services.
The two mobile giants have agreed to develop a cross-border e-money service that would enable DoCoMo customers with compatible smartphones purchased in Japan to use a prepaid e-money service called “Cashbee” in South Korea.
The agreement was reached together with eB Card, a Lotte affiliated South Korean prepaid e-money service provider that developed Cashbee in August 2010.
Cashbee is available at some 52,000 locations in LOTTE Group department stores, convenience stores and mass transportation facilities such as subways and buses. The service currently has 5 million users, DoCoMo said in a statement.
“The need for cross-border services for smartphones continues to grow as more and more people travel abroad,” Kook-hyun Kang, SVP of KT’s product business unit, said. ”KT looks forward to develop highly useful international NFC services that offer greater convenience to customers traveling overseas.”
Both operators will jointly deploy a new system to enable this new service and other cross-border NFC services between their two countries by March 2014. In future, they will also consider the deployment of other NFC-based cross-border services, such as mobile payments, promotional coupons and mass-transit ticketing.
DoCoMo and KT will share the results of their commercial endeavor with global associations and standardization bodies, to promote the realization of a commercial environment for globally compatible NFC services.
Toshiki Nakayama, SVP and MD of DoCoMo’s frontier services department, said: “DoCoMo is excited about creating a cross-border environment that enables Osaifu-Keitai (mobile phones with wallet functions) services both in Japan and abroad. Going forward, we will partner with international operators and service providers to drive the development of mobile- payment businesses for increasingly enhanced mobile experiences on a global scale.”
DoCoMo and KT have been exploring opportunities for seamless cross-border mobile services since 2005 when they established a joint business and technology cooperation committee.