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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Deutsche Telekom intends to make its move into the payments market at the physical point of sale in direct competition with banks, with an NFC payments commercial launch planned in Poland this year, before later expanding to Germany and other European countries.

U.S. mobile operator AT&T is seeking to offer other NFC services besides payments when it launches its mobile wallet—services that could include transit and event ticketing, digital door keys for offices, homes and hotel rooms and airline boarding passes, NFC Times has learned.

Google announced two new NFC-enabled devices and enhancements to its Android Beam peer-to-peer feature during the opening keynote address today of its Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco.

China’s giant mobile operator, China Mobile, and the country's big domestic payment network, China UnionPay, have signed an agreement to cooperate on mobile payment, including using SIM cards in NFC phones.

Handset maker HTC and Cathay United Bank of Taiwan, among other parties, are expected to announce plans to launch an NFC mobile-payment project putting a MasterCard PayPass credit application on microSD cards that can run in a full NFC phone model from HTC.

Samsung Electronics is the latest­–and largest–smartphone maker to introduce its own branded NFC tags, with its launch of TecTiles programmable tags.

In what could be the first step by Apple toward launching a full mobile wallet, Apple today unveiled Passbook, an application built into its next mobile operating system, iOS 6, which the company introduced at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

No. 3 U.S. mobile carrier Sprint is planning to launch its own NFC mobile wallet as early as this summer, NFC Times has learned, as the mobile wallet war in the United States continues to heat up.

U.S.-based Sequent Software hopes the addition of two NFC industry veterans, including a former NFC expert at Microsoft, will help it compete for trusted service management contracts with the top three global smart card vendors.

U.S.-based Marvell Technology Group has announced that it will begin demonstrating its planned high-speed Wi-Fi chip incorporating NFC for fast pairing of ultrabooks, tablets, gaming consoles and smart TVs.

In what is believed the first use of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, for NFC mobile payment, consumers in New Zealand can tap the Android phone to pay for bus and taxi rides, as well as small retail purchases.

LONDON – The head of London’s large Oyster card program expressed frustration with the pace of development of NFC, complaining the technology isn’t ready for London transit riders to use to pay fares.