IANS[ FRIDAY, JULY 01, 2005 09:40:42 AM]
OAKBROOK: Thanks to Indian inventor and telecom guru Sam Pitroda you can now buy goods and pay for them through your cell phone; or send emergency medical reports to your doctor on your mobile; or wire cash anywhere in the world by clicking a few buttons on your cell.
All these transactions are no longer in the realm of imagination. They have already begun to happen, enabled by a virtual wallet technology patented by Pitroda.
His small software company C-SAM based here is at the centre of what he says is a "fundamental shift in the concept of money".
"We are in a sense driving a wholly new idea of the cell phone as a repository of transactions of all sorts," Pitroda said in an interview.
The new technology OneWallet is described by the company as "a 21st century electronic metaphor for the leather wallet with not just all of the latter's easy functionality but with features that offer convenience and security that go far beyond".
The 63-year-old engineer's latest patent has found wide coverage in the American media, including the well respected Business Week which did a story on the technology in its recent issue under the headline "Will that be cash, credit or cell?"
"We have been at it for at least five years. It is only now that people have begun to understand the full impact of our technology," Pitroda said.
"OneWallet is a device-centric software application that resides on three different platforms - mobile phones, PDAs and PCs.
The OneWallet stores personal information and a wide range of previously physical cards in electronic format - credit/debit/e-cash cards, bank, brokerage accounts, health/auto/life insurance cards, identity cards (driver's licence, passport, social security), membership/loyalty cards, etc.," Pitroda said.
In simple terms, cell phones loaded with OneWallet software would allow the user to beam payments to a merchant through a device known as MerchantWallet, an interface that facilitates merchants in the world of ever growing electronic transactions.
MerchantWallet accepts infrared/radio frequency (IR/RF) transmissions from OneWallet-enabled clients, then uses the wireless operator's network to transmit transaction information to the acquirer host systems though the Wallet Service Centre (WSC).
In keeping with his penchant for dreaming big, Pitroda said his technology was not just a simple payment system but had the "potential to revolutionise the way an increasingly mobile world transacts data."
"Mobility is the key word in the way the world will conduct itself in the next decade... People around the world will expect that they are not tied down to a particular destination... to take care of their transactions. While mobility has become a reality because of the cellular technology and so have mobile transactions to some extent, they are no way close to being what they should be," Pitroda said.
"Imagine going on a business lunch to a restaurant and paying your bill by beaming into the merchant's system. You don't have to bother maintaining a paper receipt because the transaction is stored into the phone. You don't have to file an expense report because you can send it to your company's computer straight away.
"And this is just part of what our technology does. You can use it to transact medical data, book airline tickets, wire money straight from your bank and so on," Pitroda said.
He said the technology also had a significant environmental impact. "Billions of paper receipts are generated every day. Imagine the amount of paper that goes into that. Our technology does away with paper receipts completely," he said.
The technology, which has two patents approved by the US Patents Office, is already in operation in India and Japan and is about to enter the US.
Pitroda's company is in discussions with Citibank and Sprint to deploy the software. "I recognise that this technology may not be for everyone but it has enough applications to eventually become universal," he said.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1157163,curpg-1.cms