Nokia has applied for ‘Nokia Money’ to be trademarked as a a financial transaction service that uses a mobile phone at the point of sale, according to an application spotted earlier this month by IntoMobile.com. As NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com points out, Nokia currently produces the world’s only NFC-enabled mobile phone – suggesting that Nokia could be thinking of rolling out a mobile payment service.
Mobile money is certainly one of the ‘next big things’ for the industry. O2 has recently released a branded payment card in the UK, and Ovum has just published a report called ‘Mobile money in emerging markets’ that says the market is still fragile but could account for over a third of the emerging market’s mobile users in 2014. [Source: Eurocomms.com]