Pay with a wave of your phone

IS YOUR mobile phone about to swallow your wallet? That is what NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile operator, is betting—and where it leads, others often follow. In 1999, DoCoMo pioneered internet access via mobile phones through its i-mode service, and in 2001 it was one of the pioneers of third-generation (or 3G) technology. Now it believes the next big thing is using phones to pay for things, by embedding a credit card into a wireless chip built into each handset. This will mean bringing together two industries: mobile telecoms and consumer finance. Oddly, Japan is very advanced in the former and very backward in the latter. But that could be just the combination that is needed to make DoCoMo's plan work.