Motorola and Mastercard in Credit Card Phone Trial

Motorola and MasterCard are working on mobile phones capable of secure financial transactions, such as banking or buying groceries with a credit card.

Later this year, a few hundred US residents will be testing two such product lines made by Motorola that use MasterCard’s PayPass wireless payment system, according to Motorola.

The Motorola-MasterCard phones will have “the potential to be lifestyle-changing – in essence, your phone will become your wallet, key chain and your ID,” Ron Hamma, a VP at Motorola, said in a statement.

The promised handsets, and the surrounding hype, revisit an idea that was much talked about a decade ago – that consumers could make purchases with mobile phones rather than carrying cash, coins, credit cards and bank cards. Instead of having to reach for a wallet or purse, the thinking goes, consumers could wave the phones over wireless readers, similar to the way a supermarket cashier scans items.

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