NatWest seeks volunteers to bonk with their iPhones NatWest is asking volunteers to test its pay-by-bonk service on their iPhones, and is looking for 1,000 of its customers willing to wrap their iPhone in an iCarte case with embedded NFC. The trial was slipped quietly out on NatWest website, and spotted by NFC World. The iCarte case has been knocking around since 2009, and has …
Natwest apparently has not heard that there are no iphones with NFC at present while there are several Android models already equipped and in use. Figures released a while ago showed that the majority of UK smartphone uses have android phones, and globally more than a million are being registered every day.
Can people please stop this ignorant iphone fetish and wake up to reality !
Interestingly I've just moved over to FirstDirect (NFC on the card, cannot disable it, but thats another gripe...). The chap I was speaking to told me they only had an iPhone app, but consensus was that they had missed a trick not getting an Android one together - one is on the way.
Mind you, the chances of me using an app on my phone to do my banking? Nil.
Yes, a slightly "down with iPhone/Apple/etc" post here, but why go to the hassle and expense of paying to supply cases which users don't want to have to use, and are going to be useless in x months time anyway, when you could just use one of the NFC-equipped phones already on the market? Like, oh I dunno, the Galaxy S3?
The problem with tech like paying by NFC, is it's only geeky early adopters who are likely to (dare) use it at first (people like me), and geeky people like me don't tend to buy Playmobil "it just works" type phones like the iPhone, and even if we did, we don't want to have to use some crappy case just to pay using it. We want more open and bleeding-edge features, like those found on the Galaxy S3.
Before I get downvoted, I'm not overly knocking the iPhone - it's a fine phone for those who don't mind the closed locked down nature, and the (comparatively) small screen, I just get annoyed by it always being the default go-to device for things like this.
Errr - did it occur to you that because of the sheer size of the installed userbase even the geeks with iphones (who are willing to play with NFC) out number the geeks of any other single phone model regardless of anything else. Can you name any other single phone (or pair of phones) that comes close to the installed user base of the iphone.
(Actually I can) - probably any 2 newish models of the BB but can you really see hoodies or corporates using pay by bonk (with their own money.)
Although I think BB are missing a trick here. A NFC partnership with Amex would almost immediately allow them to regain their relevance in the corporate world - especially if it went one stage further and allowed pay by PIN for > £20.
If we're comparing apples with apples, and you want single phone models only, then stop talking about ALL the iPhones sold ever - just iPhone 4 (or perhaps 4S too, as this works with that). The Galaxy S3 is currently the top selling phone, even outselling iPhones (yes, I'm sure that'll change when iPhone 5 or whatever comes along, but that's ANOTHER model).
Agree with you on the BB thing though.
Here's the right order to test things...
1. The processes which pay into your customers accounts work so the customer has some money in the first place.
2. Transactions can be charged to your customers accounts once there's money in them.
3. NFC and non-essential fluff like that. It helps if the phone in question chosen to test NFC with has NFC in the first place otherwise the success rate will be extremely low.
Thank you.
Yes, quite right, a company with thousands of IT staff should stop all project work and get people who are in no way skilled in a particular system to fix it at the expense of all their other work. Also, all retrospective work carried out on a project should be binned off, until any problems in the organisation have been fixed, then they can start the project work again.
Also, more people own the phone model in question than any other single phone with NFC or not. The bank have a good understanding of iPhone, so there is less of a learning curve associated with it. Seems pretty sensible to me.
Does the word 'dependencies' ring any bells?
Let's not announce silly fluff while people are still annoyed by their bank accounts recently melting down, it doesn't make for good PR. Any geek interested enough in NFC also probably understands the implications that the meltdown had/is having and has probably already closed their current account down or is running another current account in parallel and is transferring everything as quick as they can. Today's news is that some customers are being charged twice on loans and mortgages.
@Dan 55 - Yep, I've got a pretty good understanding of dependencies and I guarantee you 100% that the working on an iPhone project has not a single interdependence with the upkeep of a mainframe hosted enterprise scheduling system. I also very much doubt that the vast majority of "geeks" have the slightest understanding of the systems run in an environment such as RBS, although many think they do. Yes some will be closing their accounts, but they're not exactly the target for a trial like this, are they? What with not being customers of the bank.
There is no point in stopping all the project work because an production system has gone down, this is why projects and support are separated.
I seem to remember the word "bonk" getting weird looks in the UK when I used it after hitting my head on something in the Underground, and gathered it was approximately equivalent to how we use "screw" in the US.
So, the ad is basically saying, "bring your phone to our bank and get screwed", right?
Used it once in a Mcdonalds drive-through, and won 2 tickets to 2 events, with hotel, to the the big sporting event happening in London later this month!
I'm a bit supporter of NFC
Now if Natwest could just sort out a trial for my NFC equipped Android phone please, for my debit card...
smiley face just because :)
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