The People’s Bank of China has announced that it intends to create a national standard.
There may be a mobile payments national standard available in the near future for China’s smartphone users, as the People’s Bank of China has announced its intentions to create one, said the vice-director of its science and technology department, Lu Shuchun.
It is expected that the standard will use the 13.56 MHz internationally common technology.
This is based on the assumption that near field communication (NFC technology) in smartphones will become the center of the mobile payments marketplace. China Unicom intends to launch its first NFC products. It is one of the largest three telecommunications operators in the country. It has already jointly launched a device with China Merchant Bank, as of Monday.
The sponsors of mobile payments in China needed to choose between either 13.56 MHz or 2.4 GHz spectrums.
China Unicom Pay currently supports 13.56 MHz, while China Mobile has been favoring 2.4 GHz. The latter of those options has a number of different technical advantages. For example, it supports remote data updates and it has the potential for powerful penetration.
At the same time, though, insiders in the mobile payments industry have said that technological superiority isn’t the only factor to be considered. Banks and telecom operators need to be able to work together to create a technical standard that also suits the financial industry’s needs.
The People’s Bank of China has now come together to work with commercial banks, as well as telecom operators and China Unicom Pay. They are hoping that this joint effort will help them to create a single mobile payments standard. The participants offered representation in order to create a team that would e able to write that standard.
The team has been working since April, and have made several different decisions, such as the choice to use 13.56 MHz as the initial mobile payments standard. This will help the country to overcome an important hurdle to the sector, which is being faced all over the world. Many experts believe that it is the lack of a standard that is leading merchants and consumers to hesitate to use the technology.
