Shanghai consumers will soon be able to pay for their Big Macs and Grande lattes using their mobile phones at McDonald’s and Starbucks.

An article published by China Retail News reports that China Mobile Shanghai will make the technology available in the coming months.

The new SIM card that integrates the payment function will go into volume production at the end of April or early May. The user experience will be tested by an invited group of users before major roll out.

Article excerpt:

…users can complete the small-scale payments by placing the mobile phones near the card reader. The costs for the change of a SIM card are between CNY50 and CNY100. The accounts of these new SIM cards are bound with the bank card or credit card accounts of users. Once the money in the SIM cards is used up, they can recharge by simply sending a short message.

It will be interesting to find out the feedback from the first group of users testing the new mobile payment function. And I wonder how long it will take before we see it roll out in North America.