Nokia shelving its wireless payment handset - the Nokia 6216

Although US consumers have yet to really witness an explosion of usage for wireless payment services through their handsets, other places in the world are seemingly opening up and embracing the technology. Nokia has been on the forefront of creating an NFC (Near Field Communications) handset in the form of the Nokia 6216 that would've seen the light of China Unicom's lineup, but the technology surrounding it has forced them to pull the plugs on the phone. A spokesman for Nokia told the NFC World, “We felt the quality of the consumer experience was not what it needed to be.” The Nokia 6216 would've been the first handset to have handed control of the payment system to the operator's SIM card through the Single Wire Protocol (SWP) – which is  the architecture that China Unicom plans on deploying in the next six months. Basically the NFC enabled handset would allow owners to simply conduct payment transactions with its built-in proximity payment system by waving the phone close to a reader – similar to how some credit cards work instead of swiping it. Nokia feels a bit more comforting knowing that the secure module be embedded into the handset as opposed to a SIM card – tying the user to the device s opposed to the SIM card. Owners could simply take their SIM card and use an alternative handset if they didn't like their current one – something that may not sit well with Nokia seeing they may want users to rely on their device.

Nokia 6216 Specifications

via The Register