T-Mobile Poland confirmed it had signed up 5,500 “users” for its NFC-enabled wallet as of early January, a little more than two months after launching the service.
The NFC Forum has announced the formation of five special interest groups, which will promote NFC rollouts in payment, retail, transport, health care, and consumer electronics.
Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission has approved a joint venture among Taiwan’s five mobile operators and its major contactless payments service provider, EasyCard Corp., to build an NFC payments platform, but with conditions.
Tag supplier Identive Group shipped nearly 15 million NFC tags during the fourth quarter of 2012, which CEO Ayman Ashour described as a quarterly record for the company.
Telefónica (O2) Germany has announced it will launch its NFC-enabled O2 Wallet in mid-February, beginning as a “friendly user test” on two Android smartphones that will enable users to tap to make purchases with the telco’s own payments service, mpass.
Research In Motion continues to promote its own trusted service management service–the only handset maker to offer one–announcing Wednesday approval by Visa of the service to manage secure elements on NFC phones.
Transactions with Visa payWave cards in Taiwan grew by 19% during the third quarter with spending up by 23%, according to Visa’s country office in Taiwan.
Visa Europe predicted that by the end of 2013, there would be 40 issuers with live NFC or contactless-mobile payment services across Europe and 80 smartphones certified by Visa to handle the payments.
The MCX consortium, the group of major U.S. merchants planning to roll out their own mobile wallet, will primarily use bar codes and cloud-based technologies to start off with, not NFC.
Taiwan-based MediaTek, a major supplier of processor chips for smartphones, has announced its first NFC chip, which it says could support three secure elements at one time.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – U.S.-based mobile device accessories maker Incipio plans to make its iPhone 4 and 4S contactless case designed for use with the Isis Mobile Wallet available in the first quarter, the company told NFC Times. That depends on certification, however.
While a sizable percentage of UK consumers say they are ready to use their smartphones as mobile wallets to make payments at the physical point of sale–especially if they receive incentives and security assurances–mobile wallets are unlikely to take off in 2013, according to UK-based market research firm ICM Research.
Australia-based Tapit Media, which implements NFC tag advertising and marketing campaigns, has received US$2.4 million (A$2.3 million) in Series A funding, the company announced.
Smart card and security company Gemalto this week joined the CAC 40 index in Paris, which counts as members such blue-chip French companies as Total, BNP Paribas, Carrefour and Airbus jet maker EADS.
Retail locations accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless payment doubled in Europe in 2012, according to MasterCard Worldwide, a development that helps clear a path for more rollouts of NFC payment.
Australia’s No. 2 telco has launched a second NFC trial this fall and plans a commercial launch in 2013, the second operator in the country to disclose plans for a commercial rollout of NFC payment.
Facing growing pressure from a dissident shareholders group, Oded Bashan has submitted his resignation as chairman of Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations, a company he co-founded 22 years ago.
France Telecom-Orange and China Mobile, the largest mobile operators in their respective home markets, have signed a memo of understanding to work together to speed the commercialization of NFC SIM cards.
ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient today launched their joint venture, Trustonic, seeking to encourage broad deployment of technology that puts smart card-like security right on the main application processor of smartphones and other devices.
Transport for London officially announced the launch of the first phase of its open-loop payment service, allowing riders to tap their contactless credit, debit and charge cards to pay fares on more than 8,000 buses.
MasterCard Worldwide and U.S.-based mobile-wallet software supplier C-SAM today announced a partnership and investment by MasterCard, expanding on their earlier working relationship.
Plans by Transport for New South Wales, Australia’s largest transit agency, to launch a trial enabling users to plan, book and pay for multimodal rides is the next step toward the agency’s long-ter
Updated: The Spokane Transit Authority in Washington state confirmed that its new fare-collection system will include contactless open-loop payments–with a beta test planned for next October, a spokesman told NFC Times' sister publication Mobility Payments.
The UK government’s plan to equip 700 rail stations over the next three years to accept contactless open-loop payments is a major initiative, as it seeks to replicate the success of London’s contactless pay-as-you go fare payments system elsewhere in the country–a goal that has proved elusive in the past.
A fourth city in Finland is beginning to roll out contactless open-loop payments, with “more in the pipeline,” according to one supplier on the project, making the Nordic country one of the latest hotspots for the technology.
Moscow Metro is recruiting more users to test its “Virtual Troika” card in two NFC wallets, those supporting Google Pay and Samsung Pay, as one of the world’s largest subway operators continues to seek more ways for its customers to pay for rides.
The Central Ohio Transit Authority, or COTA, officially launched its new digital-payments service Monday, including a fare-capping feature that the agency estimates will cost it $1.8 million per year in lost fare revenue, the agency confirmed to Mobility Payments.
As more transit agencies introduce open-loop fare payments, interest is starting to grow in use of white-label EMV cards that agencies can issue in place of proprietary closed-loop cards for riders who don’t have bank cards or don’t want to use them to pay fares.
Skånetrafiken, the transit agency serving one of Sweden’s largest counties, announced today it has expanded its contactless open-loop payments service to include the Express Mode feature for Apple Pay.
Two more bus operators in Hong Kong on Saturday launched acceptance of open-loop contactless fare payments, with both also accepting QR code-based mobile ticketing–as the near ubiquitous closed-loop Octopus card continues to see more competition.
Touting it as the largest rollout of biometric payments in the world, Moscow Metro launched its high-profile “Face Pay” service Friday, as expected, and predicted that 10% to 15% would regularly us
Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, whose metropolitan area is home to more than 30 million people, is notorious for its stifling traffic congestion. In response, the government metro and light-rail networks and now it is funding an expansion of the fare-collection system to enable more multimodal payments and to build a mobility-as-a-service platform.
Transit agencies that have rolled out open-loop contactless payments are seeing growing use of NFC wallets to pay fares, as Covid-wary passengers see convenience in tapping their phones or wearables to pay.
