April 9, 2001 – Infrared technologies took aim at mobile commerce yesterday as industry executives demonstrated "point and pay" financial transactions using a "beam" and a handheld.

The demo was part of a press conference held by the IrDA (Infrared Data Association) and companies including Visa International, CrossCheck and Ingenico to promote the industry's latest moves into wireless financial transactions.

Held in San Francisco, the point-and-pay demonstrations showed how financial transactions using credit card, debit or checking accounts could be made by beaming the data from a handheld with an IrDA interface to an IrDA-enabled Point-of-Sales (POS) terminal or a vending machine.

The technology also allows two-way communication between customer and merchant. Consumers can receive a receipt, for example, and merchants can transmit coupons.

Also announced yesterday by the IrDA: an upcoming IrFM (Infrared Financial Messaging) profile and protocol specification designed to help hardware, software and systems designers develop globally IrFM-compliant and compatible products.

IrFM, an IrDA initiative, is supported by companies including Harex InfoTech, Visa, CrossCheck, VeriFone, Ingenico, Palm, In2M, Nokia, ZiLOG, C-SAM, ACTiSYS, Novalog, Agilent, Ericsson, Extended Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Vishay Telefunken, Infineon, Motorola and Sharp. Also participating in the standards initiative, the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), a non-profit organization working to create standardized and interoperable technology platforms for financial institutions.

The IrDA is both a standards body and a trade association. The IrDA standard is designed to accommodate over 300 million mobile phones, PDAs, POS terminals and other IrDA-enabled devices.