For those in or near London, the Oyster scheme is being expanded further. As well as using the contactless smartcard to pay for your travel, the scheme has already been adopted by a number of newsagents, allowing you to buy low value items on the same card. Now, Nokia, O2, and Transport for London are planning to release a mobile phone with a built in Oyster smartcard chip, allowing the device itself to act similar to an actual Oyster card. The difference will be that the purchase amount will then be added to the user’s mobile phone bill.

Although this is a new development for the UK, The Guardian report that 50% of phones in Japan are already equipped with this sort of technology.

The trials of this device (a Nokia 6131) were announced this morning, with the trials starting today for the 500 lucky travellers.  These travellers are getting the new phone with credit on their mobile phone account, credit on their new Oyster chip in the mobile phone, and some credit from Barclaycard, who are also partners in the trial.  The trials run for 6 months, so will finish at the end of May 2008.

Thanks to The Guardian (and others), and especially Ken at UK Mobile Report, who attended the launch event this morning.  Also, thanks to Nokia.

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