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Doomed pay-by-cellphone scheme discussed in The Wall Street Journal

More from The Wall Street Journal - this time about cashless payments via cellphone:

People in Watertown, Mass., who lose their wallets have a friend in cab company owner Moe Taha. He is happy to give them a ride — as long as they bring a cellphone.

Watertown Taxi uses a service called MobileLime, provided by Vayusa Inc. of Newton, Mass., which allows passengers to pay for a ride by dialing a number on their phone, pressing a couple of buttons and then giving the cab driver the last four digits of their phone number as they leave.

Back at the taxi company’s shop, software provided by MobileLime completes the transaction. “It’s a genius idea,” Mr. Taha says.

Now I don’t know how hard they had to look for this improbable example - but it’s fascinating to know that it exists. The cynical question I have is about the probability of losing a cell phone compared to the probability of losing a wallet!!! I hear frequent stories of people losing their cell phones, as anecdotal as that is.

I think they need to seriously re-evaluate the problem case they are trying to address here. Selling on the convenience of … what exactly? I wanted to type ‘almost hands free payment’ - but ‘hands free’ is not what we’re talking about there. Selling the service to cabbies that don’t always have the infrastructure to easily manage credit card transactions is probably a better bet, but still a hard sell (as the reason most cabbies don’t have the infrastructure for credit card transactions is because they prefer cash).

The piece continues:

Closely held Vayusa already has teamed up with about 80 companies in New England to support MobileLime, and 7,000 individuals have signed on to use it. [ed note - why are we reading about this when only 7K people have signed up?? Is there that little to write about???]

ViVOtech Inc., a closely held company in Santa Clara, Calif., also has developed software that could be installed in cellphones to handle payments by credit or debit cards designated by a user. The approach requires a special device at a store’s checkout station, which could be installed for roughly $150, as well as use of cellphones that have a technology called near-field communication, which uses radio waves in a special frequency to send data over the space of a few inches.

Phones with near-field communication technology are being developed by Philips Electronics NV and Sony Corp. Philips recently announced that Samsung Electronics Co. will begin equipping its cellphones with the technology as well.

Now, the NFC technology is emergent and will be important, but it will take more relevant applications to drive adoption. Let’s hope they’re bubbling up out there.