Tech bloggers and online journalists who cover this industry worked themselves into a frenzy again the past week, this time over the hiring by Apple of Benjamin Vigier as project manager for mobile commerce.
The Ministry of Information Technology and Industry is looking to rally its nascent mobile payment industry around a single technology standard with the hope of cashing in on the world's largest mobile population. (TMCnet)
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher behind Consumer Reports magazine, is calling on federal regulators to take measures guaranteeing that existing consumer protections are applied to new mobile payment solutions. (FierceMobileContent)
A deal between loyalty-scheme operator Zapa Technology and Ireland’s largest merchant acquirer, AIB Merchant Services, could see Zapa’s contactless stickers rolled out more widely in Ireland and also gain a foothold in the United Kingdom.
Major U.S. mobile carriers planning to launch an NFC-based payment service have been ramping up hiring and are preparing to order NFC phones, but are still looking for a CEO, sources told NFC Times.
U.S mobile carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA hope to launch precommercial trials of their planned mobile-payment service in the third quarter of 2011, sources told NFC Times.
NatWest bank is dropping out of its O2 Money partnership with mobile operator Telefónica O2, leaving the telco looking for a new partner with which to offer prepaid payment cards and, later, NFC services in the competitive UK market, NFC Times has learned.
Hong Kong's Octopus Holdings has admitted to selling its customers' personal information since January 2006 and pocketing HK$44 million (US$5.7 million) from doing so. (ZDNet Asia)
While major U.S. banks and mobile operators are not apparently working together on mobile payment, they have attended meetings together convened by U.S. central bank officials, who want the parties to reach common ground on standards, infrastructure and business models.
UK-based NFC technology company Innovision announced today its CEO, David Wollen, has left the company, as the acquisition of Innovision by U.S.-based chip maker Broadcom moves forward.
The New York-based transit guru behind the Toronto Transit Commission's controversial move toward “open payment” says he believes the electronic fare system would cost Toronto “a small fraction” of the cost of adopting the province’s Presto smart card. (Toronto Star)
A year into the slow rollout of Bling Nation’s mobile-payment service in the United States, and one thing is clear: There’s pent-up demand for shaking up the status quo and poking a symbolic finger in the eye of entrenched interests.
Wells Fargo bank will reportedly test contactless-mobile payment this fall in association with Visa Inc., using microSD cards and a payWave application onboard.
U.S.-based Broadcom, a maker of chips for smartphones and other consumer electronics, has finalized its acquisition of UK-based NFC company Innovision and will likely have a product announcement by early next year.
Citi has never been sold on contactless-card payment like rival New York-based bank JPMorgan Chase. But Citi has made up for it with its interest in NFC.
A designer of NFC chip technology and maker of NFC tags, Innovision has a relatively low profile in the NFC industry. But that could change in a couple of years if the company’s vision pays off.
The U.S.-based card company Visa Inc. and its separate bank-owned affiliate, Visa Europe, share a brand and intellectual property on contactless payments and NFC.
France-based fabless chip supplier Inside Contactless had an inside track to the NFC market a couple of years ago as the first supplier of NFC chips supporting early versions of the single-wire protocol.
To those who criticize Nokia for the rather bland handsets it has outfitted with NFC and put onto the market, the handset maker responds–with some justification–that it has done more than any other phone maker to advance NFC technology.
Billing itself as one of Turkey’s largest privately held bank by assets, Garanti has been the most aggressive when it comes to rolling out contactless payment in Turkey’s innovative banking market.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute sets standards for the mobile technology used in nearly 4 billion mobile phones worldwide, and each one requires a SIM card.
Since its creation in 2006 from the merger of the two largest smart card makers at the time, Gemalto has billed itself as “the world leader in digital security.”
Co-creator of NFC with Sony and still the dominant supplier of contactless chips for transit cards worldwide, the Netherlands-based chip maker has taken a few hits of late.
A year into the slow rollout of Bling Nation’s mobile-payment service in the United States, and one thing is clear: There’s pent-up demand for shaking up the status quo and poking a symbolic finger in the eye of entrenched interests.
The rollout of contactless payment in the United Kingdom will soon enter its fourth year, yet the vast majority of cards are still being issued by just one bank, Barclays, and no large retail chain has widely deployed the technology.
With rumors heating up that makers of Android smartphones will add NFC chips to “several” models due out by the first part of next year, the battles among suppliers of those chips and the software that supports them has been heating up, as well.
France’s much-anticipated NFC demonstration project scheduled to launch Friday in Nice will feature a variety of applications, including bank payment. But the premier service is expected to be transit ticketing.
Polish mobile operator Polkomtel has not yet launched its planned NFC mobile-payment project–set to start in June with 500 users–but it is already talking about expanding it.
France-based Twinlinx said it will begin shipments in May and June of the first small quantities of its NFC-enabled stickers that use a Bluetooth connection to communicate with handsets.
While many doubt that telcos and banks will ever agree on a business model for NFC and complain about the continued lack of phones supporting the technology, two major players in the United Kingdom–Barclaycard and Orange UK–are preparing for a commercial launch.
Singapore-based trusted service manager Cassis International has appointed smart card industry veteran Jean-Philippe Bétoin to take over its European operation as the company seeks to expand in Europe and take on its larger rivals on their home turf.
Although there are no phones yet on the market to support NFC applications on the SIM, France-based smart card maker Gemalto believes the time is right to introduce the first SIM card with a high-end transit-ticketing application onboard, Mifare DESFire.
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