Mobile commerce gets a head start in city
With its Octopus card experience, Hong Kong is already ahead of the game in mobile commerce
Following Apple's recent announcement of the iPhone 6's mobile payment feature, Apple Pay, experts from both the public and private sector gave positive predictions for the outlook of mobile commerce in Hong Kong at a conference in the city yesterday.
Apple announced its much anticipated iPhone 6 on September 9, and unveiled Apple Pay, a new mobile payment function which uses near field communication (NFC) technology, which has previously been used in Octopus cards and contactless payment cards.
Visa, which sponsored the conference, is one of the companies partnering with Apple on Apple Pay, along with Mastercard and American Express.
Apple Pay "is getting people thinking about mobile payment, and I think that's good for the industry as a whole," said Nicholas Lee, head of emerging products and innovation at Visa Hong Kong and Macau.
Launching for US customers next month, Apple Pay is expected to bring "cardless" mobile commerce, which has faced concerns over its security, into the mainstream.
Lee said the technology addressed those concerns by replacing the consumer's credit or debit card number with a time-sensitive token, which would be securely stored and not reusable if compromised.
"Anything that is just a magnetic card with a sixteen digit number in the front and three digits in the back will be easy to steal and replicate," said Francis Fong, founding chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing. "The new system should be much more secure than the existing one."