Wouldn't it be great if you could just press a few buttons on your mobile phone to buy a drink from a vending machine near you?

This scenario is not at all far-fetched, thanks to the MPay service that will allow you to buy a can of soft drink easily and within a few seconds from a vending machine with the help of your phone.

The service is from Advanced MPay, a subsidiary of Advanced Info Service (AIS).

Advanced Mpay's managing director Komsan Bupppanimite said the concept of the service is to allow mobile-phone users to turn their phones into wallets, which could store virtual money instead of carrying banknotes and coins, to pay for any purchases easily.

The service was developed using a technology called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). With USSD technology, customers just need to dial *555* followed by the service code, the amount of money and the PIN code.

Once users send a request to the centre, they need to wait just a few seconds to receive an SMS that confirms their purchase.

In the meantime, the centre will also send an SMS approval to the vending machine to release a can of drink automatically.

However, not all vending machines can support this kind of payment.

 Komsan said vending machines needed to be modified to work with  mobile payments.

"We have worked with vending-machine manufacturers to do some modifications on them by embedding AIS's mobile SIM into the machines. The embedded SIM turns the vending machine into a device which has its own unique mobile-phone number," said Komsan.

There are now 114 vending machines that are compatible with the MPay service. All of them are in Bangkok, located specifically in universities, shopping centres, and office buildings.

The company has provided mobile payment with USSD technology for AIS users under the MPay service system since late last year. So far, there have been around 450,000 users, of which around 15 per cent are active users who use MPay for paying AIS bills, One-2-Call refills, and to buy items from vending machines, pay utility bills and for online shopping.

People can subscribe to the MPay service for free. They have to then store between Bt300 and Bt30,000 in their mobile wallet via an ATM machine.

They can put money from their savings account or even from their credit card into their mobile wallet as well.

The company aims to encourage around 10 per cent of AIS's 17 million users, or 1.5 million to 1.7 million people, to subscribe to MPay service by the end of this year.

Its revenue target for this year is Bt100 million.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation