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Hectic, at times frantic. London is the kind of place where getting around faster and standing in fewer queues has a great deal of appeal. The mobile operator O2 thinks it may have the answer - a mobile phone that allows commuters to pay for their tranport journeys as well as small ticket items like coffee, newspapers and books. Already sold? Well, at this point it's only a six-month trial involving 500 handpicked 02 customers. But with a host of partners including Nokia, Barclays, Visa and Transport for London - the hopes are high. Mike Short is O2's VP of R&D. SOUNDBITE: Mike Short, Research and Development Vice President, 02 saying: "The primary benefits of the trial are going to be around the user experience. It has to be easy to use. The second benefit is, we need to understand the security and trust that the customers have when using devices such as this." The phones come preloaded with 200 pounds for spending in participating stores and 50 pounds to use on travel. If the phone is stolen, Barclaycard is liable for the cash still loaded on the mobile. This kind of mobile payment option has been available in Japan for a couple of years, so in that sense the UK is lagging in its embrace of what are known as near field communications, or NFC. But the head of Nokia's Emerging Business Unit Richard Humbach says Britain could potentially leap-frog Japan in this field if the partners find adequate rewards in working together. SOUNDBITE: Richard Humbach, head of NFC Business Unit, Nokia saying (English): "Everyone who travels in London uses the Oyster card. The contactless is just starting so I think as time goes forward we'll see that roll out in more and more places. I'm convinced it's a good service for the consumers and for the merchants. And then we have all the other bits, the O2 dome and all these different kind of things. And at the end I think it will be a more powerful proposition than in Japan because everyone will be able to use it. You won't be limited to having a certain type of bank with a certain type of phone but rather any phone, any bank, any operator will be able to use NFC." Fiona O'Farrell works with Transys, the company behind the Oyster and Mobile Payment Technology. SOUNDBITE: Fiona O'Farrell, Spokesperson, Transys saying (English): "So Oyster is all about going through London fast, getting cheaper fares for example going through these gates, 40 people per minute can get through using Oyster technology whereas only 15 per minute can get through using paper tickets. So there are 10 million Oyster cards in circulation in London and the new addition to this is trialling whether having Oyster on the mobile phone is going to be good for customers." Even if the trial goes extremely well, this technology is not expected to be in the hands of regular UK consumers before the end of 2008. Matt Cowan, Reuters. COMPANIES MENTIONED: SYMBOLS: