Sony and others to promote FeliCa cards...

Sony said that it and four other Japanese companies would set up a joint venture to promote the use of FeliCa contactless cards, used for ticketing and electronic money transactions.

The joint venture, which includes trading house Mitsui & Co and printing and electronics components company Dai Nippon Printing, will be established in January with capitalisation of ¥400m (£1.7m). Sony will take a 60 percent stake, it said.

Plastic cards equipped with Sony's FeliCa chips, which can be scanned for data transfers, are used widely in Japan and other Asian countries, including China and Singapore. Sony has shipped more than 250 million FeliCa chips since 1996.

In Japan, electronics makers put the chips in mobile phones, turning handsets into e-wallets and e-tickets.

In the UK, mobile operator O2 is working with handset manufacturer Nokia and Transport for London on a six-month e-ticketing trial, which will allow travellers in London to use their mobile phone in place of an Oyster card. The system may in future be extended to give users the ability to pay sums of up to £10 simply by swiping their mobile phone over a card reader.