Visitors to an Australian exhibition will be able to carry their wallets digitally in their mobile phones, according to the enterprise SMS solutions provider, Start Corporation.
Visitors to the DigitaLife2004 consumer electronics exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, will be able to carry their event tickets, business cards, ShowCash debit cards - and even a loyalty card - in their mobile phones during the exhibition.
Encoded SMS tickets
Tickets will be issued in the form of specially encoded SMS text messages, and ID cards will be saved as mobile phone address book entries. The tickets and ID cards can then be scanned as if they were physically presented in a traditional paper or plastic form.
The information held in the SMS message, which would otherwise have been stored as a barcode or on a magnetic stripe, is encoded into a specially deigned numeric 'geometry', which is optically scanned and decoded from the mobile phone's display. This removes the need for compatibility with specific mobile device communication standards (such as Bluetooth or Infrared).
Universal compatibility
Unlike existing picture-message counterparts, the new technology is handset-independent as well as carrier-independent, and is consequently supported by all of the message-enabled handsets on the market, including GSM, CDMA, 3G, i-Mode and Blackberry. And because numeric characters are also language independent, the system is internationally compatible.
Secure ID replacement
The technology could also be used to securely replace a variety of tickets, vouchers, payment cards, loyalty cards, travel passes, ID cards, bill-payment barcodes, and other types of physical ID tokens. The technology's provider, Start Corporation, even suggests that its new technology could herald the beginning of the age of the 'paperless wallet'.
The creation, distribution and scanning of these mobile IDs is powered by Start's MobileID technology. The firm is also working with event registration service provider, Info Salons, to deploy the technology for conferences in the Asia Pacific region.
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