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How to turn your iPhone into a mobile wallet

We’ve played with Orange’s Samsung Tocco Quick Tap over the past few weeks, the first phone in the UK to offer contactless payment. The jury’s still out on whether NFC payments, mobile wallets and the rest will ever get adopted by the public.

(Today O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere announced that they’ve to setup an alliance to push forward with NFC)

We’re not that tempted to switch over from our all-powerful smartphones to the Tocco Quick Tap anytime soon. So what if we were able to add contactless payment abilities to our smartphone favourites?

We decided to make our own mobile wallet, using an iPhone, some Blu Tack, a contactless payment card, and a protective silicon case. (In fact, the the case isn’t truly necessary, but keeps your credit card a lot more secure.)

 

Obviously you wouldn’t be able to check your current balance on our own handmade version, but with the current Orange system, you’re obliged to switch money across to the phone from your bank account. You also have to ensure the “Quick Tap Wallet” app is running on your phone to make payments. As long as your card gets detected, the payment is far speedier on our effort.

Sadly, this won’t add any other extra NFC functionality; but you’re not limited to contactless bank cards; you could add your Oyster card, or even your work’s passcard, if it uses a similar contactless system.

Other ways of adding NFC capabilities include embedding the NFC chip into your microSD card.

What do you think? Will NFC ever catch on?

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