DoCoMo and KT collaborate on cross-border mobile money service

The Japanese cellular operator NTT DoCoMo and its South Korean counterpart KT have agreed to develop a near-field communication (NFC)-based cross-border mobile payment service. Under the deal DoCoMo subscribers travelling to Korea will be able to use KT’s mobile money offering Cashbee, which is available at 52,000 locations across the country and currently has around five million users in Korea. The two operators plan to jointly deploy a new system to enable this and other cross-border NFC services between their two countries by the end of March 2014. Going forward, they will consider the deployment of other NFC-based cross-border services, such as mobile payments, promotional coupons and mass-transit ticketing.