Japanese firms plan to unify bill-settlement devices.(East Japan Railway Co.)(JCB Company Ltd.)(NTT DoCoMo Inc.)(Brief article)

Asia Pacific Telecom, October, 2006

Four electronic-money services operators in Japan have decided to release uniform bill-settlement devices at restaurants and stores to transform their services into something that is more user-friendly. These operators are East Japan Railway, NTT DoCoMo, bitWallet, and JCB.

The four services together serve 40 million users, and can be offered in 100,000 restaurants and shops. The adoption of these uniform settlement devices will increase the speed of the provision of electronic money services. The operators plan to introduce 100,000 such devices within the next five years. As per the agreement, the Edy and QUICPay operators would use the standards developed by JR East and NTT DoCoMo.