Mobile phones make payments at Coca-Cola machines

by Michael Caputo, posted Nov 15th 2006 at 1:21PM

In a not too distant future, consumers in the good olD US of A will be able to walk up to vending machines and make Coca-Cola purchases using their cellphone. The same VeriSign Coke apparently intends to use already links the cellular operators and over 100 vending machines across Austria for customers of Mobilkom and ONE wireless. No word on whether or not this is going to use RFID or something, but we think it'd be in their best interests to keep it simple, and rock it SMS style. Now to figure out a use for all the change in our pockets.

[Via Slashphone]

Filed under: Misc

Tags: mobilkom, ONE, verisign

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

yaromir @ Nov 15th 2006 2:23PM

Well, I probaly won't discover America by saying that Japanese had cellphone-friendly Coca-Cola vending machines back in 2002. While the first generation of machines used bar-code scanners to conduct transaction, the second gen. machines are using NFC stahdard-based FeliCa technology. See details:
http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2006/02/coca-cola-ntt-docomo-deployed-5000.html

Neutral

prophet @ Nov 15th 2006 3:37PM

even before 02, the first RFID cellular was in japan, nothing new about this.. infact the title should be,

'Finaly, North Americans get a decent Technology'

lol.. great stuff though.

Neutral

Mark Jenkins @ Nov 15th 2006 4:24PM

Finland (Sonera) was playing with the concept in 1997. We had one of their machines shipped to a U.S. event in 1998.

Granted the technology is old. The reason the U.S. is so far behind is that there is no consumer demand. Sure, if your reading this, your a geek and would love and adopt the concept. The problem is most other people haven't seen the connection between cell phones, their bank account, and pop machines.

Let's see if Cingular's latest announcement (wireless banking) changes this.

Neutral

Sergio Goldenberg @ Nov 15th 2006 4:44PM

Come'on, in Chile we had this service launched back in 2002. You send a message with your cellphone (the vendor ID, the softdrink ID) and a few seconds later, the machine outputs your can :)

Neutral

blueacewe @ Nov 16th 2006 8:44AM

I tried to use one of this in Singapore in 2002 and it wasn't a happy experience. I sent 3 messages and got no Coke.

Neutral

MK @ Nov 17th 2006 2:06AM

In Finland you call the machine. A woman answers and says something like "This service will cost 1,40 EUR. Thank you for calling." Not so much of a thrill.

Neutral

Automatica @ Nov 17th 2006 12:25PM

Simplewire was doing this at CTIA last year, brought in a vending machine and had it hooked up to a short code. Thing is, the app broke and when they rebooted, 30 cokes came spitting out of the vending machine.

Blah.

Neutral

Nestor C. @ Nov 17th 2006 3:06PM

In Chile, it also worked via short codes (something like *[machine id]*[soda id]#). You could buy subway tickets as well from other vending machines. IIRC both systems were canceled a couple of years ago.

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