Geez, that sounds too unwieldy to be at all useful. If the card can be recharged via the phone, or automatically recharged, it might be useful for the consumers. But I doubt it. At least not if it's rolled out as described in the link.
Felica-based solutions are nice, but enough people have to be convinced to use the service, and merchants have to be convinced to add yet more equipment. I doubt either will be the case in the US, given the way phones are marketed and sold there. Anyway, even in Japan, Felica and osaifu-keitai seem worthless outside of the mega-cities, except as a phone.
I think in this case the credit-card / bank-card providers have the upper-hand at the moment. They can seed their existing customer base with contact-less payment cards as a means of driving retailers to invest in the equipment. But I don't see this as enough of an improvement over just using an ATM card for making purchases, to get consumers and merchants to change their current practices.
As for how money is made off of Felica or osaifu-keitai purchases...if it's anything like credit cards, the retailer pays a fee (maybe 1, 2%) for each transaction. The retailers bank on your buying more stuff, and the providers make money off of the interest in the money you use to charge your account (or interest / transaction fees where the osaifu-keitai debits from your credit card). Which is basically how debit cards are used in the US...
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Geez, that sounds too unwieldy to be at all useful. If the card can be recharged via the phone, or automatically recharged, it might be useful for the consumers. But I doubt it. At least not if it's rolled out as described in the link.
Felica-based solutions are nice, but enough people have to be convinced to use the service, and merchants have to be convinced to add yet more equipment. I doubt either will be the case in the US, given the way phones are marketed and sold there. Anyway, even in Japan, Felica and osaifu-keitai seem worthless outside of the mega-cities, except as a phone.
I think in this case the credit-card / bank-card providers have the upper-hand at the moment. They can seed their existing customer base with contact-less payment cards as a means of driving retailers to invest in the equipment. But I don't see this as enough of an improvement over just using an ATM card for making purchases, to get consumers and merchants to change their current practices.
As for how money is made off of Felica or osaifu-keitai purchases...if it's anything like credit cards, the retailer pays a fee (maybe 1, 2%) for each transaction. The retailers bank on your buying more stuff, and the providers make money off of the interest in the money you use to charge your account (or interest / transaction fees where the osaifu-keitai debits from your credit card). Which is basically how debit cards are used in the US...