By Liu Xiaofeng

A doubt has still existed, i.e. can mobile phones pay public utility fees, pay bills and order goods? But make a general view of the world, from Japan and South Korea to Europe, the development steps of mobile payment business is accelerating increasingly. Especially in Japan and South Korea, the mobile payment business becomes popular increasingly as a business growth point with huge development potential. Related insiders in telecom industry state that 2008 is the basic year for mobile payment application while 2009 is the year to develop mobile payment. In accordance with the latest report on the analysis and research of telecom industry, in the upcoming several years, the speed of worldwide mobile payment's substitution of such payment manners as cash, credit card or debit card will increase rapidly. It is expected that there will be US$36 billion-valued transaction paid by the mobile non-touch manner by 2011.

As the country with most mobile phone users in the world, China's mobile payment technologies and industrial modes are gradually mature and clear. In accordance with the latest industrial analysis research report, China's mobile payment market scale will reach RMB1.974 billion yuan in 2009, and the compound annual growth rate is 70.4 percent from 2006 to 2009. Additionally, the mobile payment user scale will reach 82.5 million persons in 2009. The above data shows that the mobile payment has an unlimited promising future with very huge market space. In a sense, for China's considerable number of mobile phone users, the promotion and popularization of mobile payment will be more significant in every aspect of people's life apart from the considerable profit.

Domestic mobile payment has come on the stage officially. Through the close strategic cooperation with Bank of Communication, Shanghai Branch on such fields as integrated communicating information service, financial service and resource utility, China Telecom, Shanghai Branch has officially launched the "mobile payment" business for "e surfing" 3G. A related principle with China Telecom, Shanghai Branch expressed that the "mobile payment" business is China Telecom's novel electronic product for payment based on the application platform of "e surfing" mobile phones. At present, E surfing "mobile payment" can provide such services as ordering e-cinema tickets, paying reservation fee for famous medical experts, paying telecom fee and public utility bills by mobile phones, and recharging fee through various modes, such as short messages, WAP and client terminals, and many kinds of payment accounts, such as telecom accounts, payment cards and band cards. In the near future, the banking business of mobile phones will also be launched. As long as binding a mobile phone card with a bank card, you can directly use mobile phones for such financial services as transfer and remittance, payment, stock speculation, fund business, foreign exchange business, gold business and repayment of credit cards. What's more, it is revealed that the non-touch mobile phone swipe payment that directly swipes the mobile phone to make payments on POS devices in supermarkets, convenience stores or shops will be launched soon.

"It will be a milestone for China to use mobile phones to promote such services as electronization of family bills, facilitation of mobile phone payment, and informatization of bill notes." As for the service of using telecom mobile phones to pay for all kinds of bills first created by China Telecom, Shanghai Branch, Chi Xiaobin, Executive Vice General Manager of Shanghai FuFeiTong Information Service Co. Ltd gave a high praise, he expressed that the mobile phone-payment function can enable the mobile phone become a new payment tool and bill carrier from originally single communication tool; the mobile phone's e-bill and payment function has provided great convenience for citizen to meet their demand of finishing bill payment by their carryon anytime and everywhere, which have also catered for the current development trend and service concept of "convenient, saving and environment-friendly" in IT cutting-edge technologies.