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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Intel and MasterCard Worldwide have announced plans to enable consumers to tap their NFC phones and contactless cards on notebook computers to shop on the Web.

Substantial rollouts of NFC at the point of sale are still three to five years off, said David Messenger, executive vice president for online and mobile in American Express’ Enterprise Growth unit, though he predicted NFC would eventually become a “big force” in payments and other mobile commerce.

The senior director of financial services for Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics chain in the United States, said she believes NFC holds great promise but fears costs will be daunting, standards are insufficient and the chain’s customer data might be used to benefit competitors.

Discover Financial Services plans to conduct a large employee pilot starting this month with an NFC-enabled iPhone attachment, iCarte, NFC Times has learned.

Nokia has introduced an app supporting NFC-based check-ins on social-networking site foursquare and is testing a tag system that it says could provide more security for rewards and other loyalty programs.

Research in Motion has announced that MasterCard Worldwide has certified two of its NFC-enabled BlackBerrys to run MasterCard’s PayPass payment application, and mobile operator France Telecom-Orange is interested in introducing the phones for NFC payment and other services.

Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority has announced the award of its contract for trusted service management to a consortium led by France-based Gemalto, with plans calling for a nationwide launch of NFC payment, ticketing and tag-reading services on the island nation from mid-2012.

France-based Inside Secure announced it has shipped 10 million NFC chips this year through Oct. 15 and told NFC Times that most of the chips come stacked with embedded secure elements that could support ID, payment and other secure applications.

Andy Lees, president of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, confirmed in an interview Wednesday that the mobile platform will support NFC and reportedly that it would support payments.

Google has unveiled its Galaxy Nexus, its much-anticipated follow-up to the Nexus S, which the Web giant is touting as supporting NFC-based content-sharing functionality called "Android Beam." The feature is part of the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Nokia today introduced yet another Symbian-based NFC phone, the Nokia 603, which like other recent models, it is targeting at first-time smartphone users.

UK-based payment card issuer and acquirer Barclaycard has joined the NFC Forum as a sponsor member, giving it a seat on the board of the standards and trade group, the forum announced today.