Using cellphones to pay for stuff via NFC (near-field communications) is certainly nothing new; Sony, for one, has been doing it for years with its FeliCa system in Japan. Regardless of how dominant FeliCa or NXP's Mifare are, though, standardization is always a welcome move in an industry that hasn't quite taken off yet on a global scale. Sony and NXP have committed to putting their noggins together to come up with a unified standard for NFC payments that will ultimately support both FeliCa and Mifare-based equipment, while also bringing together two of the most widely-deployed systems to date. Given that both Sony and NXP parent Philips are members of the NFC Forum, we have hope that this announcement lines up nicely with that group's efforts, too, rather than going against the grain with a parallel effort. Not to say we'd put that kind of buffoonery past Sony, of course.