Taiwan market: Chunghwa Telecom launches Visa payWave service

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) on September 19 announced the launch of Visa payWave, a contactless credit card payment service based on NFC (near field communication), through cooperation with Visa, Nokia and the local Chinatrust Commercial Bank.

Initially, 500 CHT subscribers with Nokia 6131i handsets will be able to access the Visa payWave service which is available at nearly 3,000 retail stores around Taiwan, CHT pointed out.

In addition, CHT will adopt the SWP (Single Wire Protocol) standard developed by the GSM Association to further its NFC applications, the company indicated. Following the finalization of SWP slated for November 2007, commercialization of the standard will take some time and CHT will offer a series of services progressively in the interim, CHT pointed out.

In other news, CHT has 380,000 subscribers of FTTx (fiber to the building/home) at download speeds of over 10Mbps as well as 1.92 million subscribers of 3G mobile communication services currently, and expects the numbers to increase to 500,000 and 2.20 million, respectively, at the end of this year, the company has detailed.