OXFORD, United Kingdom-In an attempt to bring some order into the chaotic and extended fight over mobile payment standards, the European Union (EU) has stepped in and said it will fund a large-scale trial of a system with the backing of Vodafone and Orange.
The trial, known as the Trusted Transaction Roaming (t2r) project, will look to establish a mechanism that would harmonize the use of mobile e-commerce payments over disparate networks. The trial will be managed by the m-commerce software developer Radicchio and implemented by Vodafone and Orange (France), together with Gemplus, SmartTrust and Globalsign.
The trial, which has a start date of the first quarter of 2003, could pave the way for an EU-wide system that uses a single, secure infrastructure for customer payments with identities shared among banks, operators and merchants. Areas to be tested within the t2r project include how a three-tier security system could successfully operate with personal identification number (PIN) entry required for micropayments, the use of digital certification for 15 euro (US$14.97) to 100 euro (US$99.86) payments, and PKI for spending above this level.
