Sony wants hopes use public transport as a springboard to promote its long-standing Felica contactless payment system across South East Asia.

According to Bloomberg, the Japanese vendor wants to make Felica as popular regionally as it is at home by striking deals with transport companies across the region.

Relative late comers in mobile payments, such as Apple and Samsung, have been gaining much more attention than Sony but the Japanese company wants to rebalance that.

Transport systems can be a springboard for attracting merchants to the Felica system, as a big commuter base encourages retailers in train stations or bus depots to participate, said Kazuyuki Sakamoto, a Sony senior general manager in charge of Felica operations.

The plan is to make the technology easier to adopt. The Felica platform, which would only work in a smartphone with a customised chip, may be embedded as software on common chipsets as early as next year, Sakamoto said.

Despite its popularity at home, Felica’s first deployment was actually in the Octopus card system in Hong Kong. Octopus cards are used in a variety of situations beyond public transport, including convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, parking meters, service stations and vending machines.

Last week, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia struck a deal with Sony to enable payments for bus fares in Bandung with smartphones before taking Felica into retail outlets. Vietnam is another possible market where Sony has trialled Felica with a Hanoi bus operator.