Buying fries with my phone - Oct 30, 2007

- By Alfred Siew (Digital Life)

The cashier at McDonald's thought I was pulling a fast one when I told him I wanted to pay for my order with my cellphone last Wednesday.

He was still looking surprised after I tapped my ez-link phone onto the reader on the table and carried my food off.

The phone was a no-brand model that StarHub and EZ-Link contracted a local firm to make, and my quick test of the technology turned out to be mostly smooth.

In fact, when I turned up at the ticket counter at Sengkang MRT station to top up my phone, the staff knew - as they should - about the mobile payment trial that EZ-Link and StarHub were conducting.

Though the reader at the station had some problems detecting the phone at first and I had to restart it twice, I eventually managed to top it up with $20.

One tap and the gate opened each time - even when the phone was connected to a call.

The biggest glitch I faced during the test was with the ez-link virtual purse software on the phone.

Although it showed useful information like my last top-up amount and transaction history, it took a few good seconds to start up each time.

To be fair, this was only a test phone, but the big test is whether people will find it useful to pay with a phone. To me, it certainly felt unusual at first. But after tapping on a fare gate a few times, it became quite natural.