If there’s ever been a reason to make sure your next phone has NFC built in, it’s the announcement today that Woolworths will be rolling out Visa PayWave across all its brands over the coming months.
The technology – which has been rolling out across the country in the likes of 7/11 and Bunnings stores – will be coming to all the Woolworths brands, including Woolworths, Big W and Dick Smith, to name a few. As always, it will let you pay for purchases under $100 without having to sign or pin your way through the checkout.
While the only NFC enabled phone currently in Australia – the Google Nexus S – can’t actually process NFC payments, the only thing stopping it is a secure NFC app for Android, which Visa will almost certainly release when there are more handsets toting the technology. Here’s hoping that doesn’t take too long. Until then, we’ll all just have to use PayWave or PayPass credit cards.
Peter
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:27 PMAt last – they’ve had this technology in Japan for many years now.
sarujin
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:42 PMFinally, not having the paywave/paypass system as self service checkouts is stupid.
You can quickly scan your own items, but then when it comes to paying you’ve got to insert the chipped card, put in PIN, wait, wait, finally get approved.
At paywave/paypass systems are great and much quicker.
poedgirl
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:41 PMHere’s hoping I’ll be able to use my Nexus S for payments in all stores relatively soon.
Taufiq
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:56 PMCitation needed?
Simon
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:42 PMExcellent, now I can walk down to the store for lunch and not have to bring my wallet. Just one less thing to carry :)
Fred
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:53 PMWhy can’t rhe Nexus S process payments? Is it only in Australia?
Sean
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:54 PMHey hang on, isn’t visa pay wave considered a contactless payment method which uses RFID, not NFC? Isn’t NFC where there is a near field communications chip in a phone which then will provide the payment data either stored in the phone or connected to the internet for the payment (i.e. not just the data transferred which is sent from the RFID chip in a credit card)?
poedgirl
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 5:51 PMNFC is RFID ISO 18000-3 compatible. In other words, an NFC phone is an RFID tag and reader.
Chris
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 8:19 AMI’m guessing as a part of visa pay wave the machines will also be able to handle NFC so when the technology comes to more and more phones all they have to do is make an app for it and you will be ready to go.. So when an android app for nexus s is released by visa pay wave you should be right to go splash cash.. Well that’s what I gathered from reading
Sean
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:37 AMAhhh sweet, thanks for clarifying that…. I kinda did some reading after I posted that…. Yeah I know should have done the research first :)
Craig
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 5:41 PMI thought the Nokia C7 had NFC as well – maybe not in Australia however
mechanimorph
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 6:35 PMMy Nokia C7 has a NFC chip… let’s hope Anna enables it.
LucasF
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 7:32 PMThis article fails to explain WTF is NFC? I mean I can kind of deduce it from the rest but….still….its friday…I dont want to think.
Sicarius123
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 11:25 PMAwesome! Another bunch of retards that’ll charge everything to my credit card instead of eftpos because they’re too stupid to realise some people HAVE credit cards and not just visa debit.
“Savings thanks”!
*waves your card*
“Thanks idiot for charging it to credit”
Bob
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 12:22 AM“Woolworths will be rolling out Visa PayWave across all its brands”
Woolworths has no “brands”.
Ash
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 6:17 PMWoolworths owns; Big W, Dick Smith, Dan Murphys, BWS & Tandy.
They all use the same EFTPOS machines/systems.
Ben
Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 11:17 AMWoolworths Limited has several brands. Eg. Woolworths, Safeway, Dan Murphy’s, Big W, Dick Smith etc
Bjorn
Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 8:33 PMumm dick smith and Big W are owned by woolworths
SirSpamalot
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 4:16 AMWhat about Mastercard PayPass?
Dan
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 12:05 PMI wonder if this means they’ll finally open those ridiculously artificially locked down ePump bowsers at their petrol stations up to PayWave/PayPass, as they promised to do by 18 months ago?
Andy
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 8:29 AMDoes this mean they’re going to stop blocking Visa Debit cards? Paywave only supports a credit transaction and woolworths only accept savings or cheque transactions from debit cards (to save merchant fee costs)
Sean
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:41 AMWouldnt that be a little security issue as credit cards inherently have protection against fraud, while visa and MasterCard debit don’t? Especially when you consider that you don’t put in a pin when you use pay pass this may be a little dangerous.
Do visa and MasterCard debit even have the pay pass chips inside them?