DoCoMo presented on Tuesday, a prototype cellphone featuring a brand new contacless payment system. The main feature of this system is that instead of waving your phone in front of a payment terminal, the phone send the data over electric signals through the human body without even get your mobile phone out of your pocket.
These sort of improvements are quite logical when performed in a country like Japan, where contacless payment is a common way to pay relative cheap goods (ticket gates, vending machines or train fares). Anyway some other countries are developing, testing or deploying their own contacless systems (i.e. South Korea, U.S.A.,…).
The transmitter technology has been developed by a start-up called Kaiser Technology Co. while the handset integration has been done by IBM and Matsushita Electric Works.
Although this system is currently at an early stage of development its applications are huge, from presence control to security systems. You can read an introduction article here explaining the current contacless payment system used in many stores in Japan.
