Large Italian payment card processor SIA plans to launch what it hopes will become an interoperable trusted service management hub for Italy to connect banks to telcos.
Identive Group, a secure ID, NFC tag and reader maker, turned a profit in the fourth quarter–albeit a small one–its first time in the black for several consecutive quarters, helped by what CEO Ayman S. Ashour described as “a record quarter for NFC.”
The International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 airlines worldwide, plans to finish its evaluation of NFC technology this year and could propose standards to its members in October, the group has told NFC Times.
NXP Semiconductors shipped 125 million NFC chips in 2012 for smartphones and tablets, the chip maker told NFC Times, beating projections for the NFC device market.
A MasterCard NFC payment pilot in Brazil, launched last week with Itaú bank, mobile operator TIM Brasil, point-of-sale terminal supplier Redecard, and France-based Gemalto, is expected to lead to a full rollout of mobile PayPass services in Brazil.
Google has upgraded its membership in the NFC Forum standards and trade group to the top rung, sponsor member, giving the search giant a seat on the 13-member board.
Norway’s largest telco, Telenor, and its biggest bank, DNB, plan to launch their planned NFC-enabled wallet commercially before the end of the year, the telco told NFC Times.
BARCELONA – Visa and Samsung Electronics have announced a landmark agreement that will see a Visa payWave application preloaded on the embedded secure elements in forthcoming NFC-enabled Samsung devices.
More than 100 users in a 10-month trial of NFC transit ticketing in Málaga, Spain, tapped for a total of 7,500 rides and got information from smart posters at bus stops more than 3,000 times, France Telecom-Orange has announced.
The Isis mobile operator joint venture plans to introduce a new design for its mobile wallet and is changing the supplier of its device software, NFC Times has learned.
MasterCard Worldwide is reorganizing its mobile-payments effort and team, planning to focus on what it calls “digital convergence,” with the aim of “enabling every connected device to be a commerce device,” NFC Times has learned.
Mobile operator France Telecom-Orange has launched an NFC awards contest for developers, seeking to spur developers to create innovative NFC applications for the French market.
The three major banks in the Netherlands, ING, ABN AMRO and Rabobank, have formed a temporary group to launch a large NFC trial in the Dutch city of Leiden with mobile operator KPN.
Spain’s CaixaBank, mobile operator Telefónica and Visa Europe, along with technology vendor Gemalto, plan to demonstrate NFC payment at next week’s big Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Visa is reportedly gearing up to support a “mainstream launch” of NFC mobile payments, along with a cloud-based digital wallet, according to Marc O’Brien, managing director of Visa UK and Ireland.
Visa Europe predicts the UK will have 34 million contactless Visa-branded cards on issue and 175,000 contactless terminals deployed by the end of 2013, with Europe reaching 70 million Visa-branded contactless cards and 650,000 contactless terminals this year.
Merchant locations accepting PayPass cards and applications on mobile devices stood at nearly 700,000 globally at the end of 2012, MasterCard Worldwide announced this week.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Isis Mobile Wallet users in and around Salt Lake City are tapping for transit fares with their NFC-enabled mobile phones more than 600 times a day and that number is climbing, said the Utah Transit Authority.
Germany-based smart card company Giesecke & Devrient and Taiwan-based flash memory chip supplier Phison Electronics have dissolved their joint venture that had targeted the market for microSD cards to store mobile-payment applications.
NXP Semiconductors said today it generated about $70 million in sales from its NFC chips and secure elements in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 20% over the previous quarter and three times the chip maker’s NFC revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Research In Motion has unveiled its new NFC-enabled BlackBerry 10 operating system and the first two devices running the software, along with a new corporate name.
Telefónica Czech Republic has launched NFC payments with GE Money Bank and MasterCard Worldwide, making it the first Telefónica group operator to commercialize NFC.
California state officials have released a list of seven bidders it intends to award contracts to for the supply of core technology for the state’s ambitious plan to help more than 300 transit agencies roll out open-loop fare payments statewide.
The Moscow Department of Transport has announced it is launching a test of its planned “MultiTransport” mobility-as-a-service platform, which will enable users to plan and pay for rides on the Moscow Metro and other public transit, along with taxis. The city said it is planning to add other transport modes, including car-share and bike and scooter rental.
A commercial bus company serving Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, has launched contactless open-loop payments on board its new electronic buses, and reports say officials and bankers would like to see contactless EMV payments expanded to other modes of transport.
Moscow Metro has 45,000 users for its Face Pay service since launching its rollout of facial recognition fare-payments in mid-October, the transit agency said today, in releasing more details about how the service works.
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.
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
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.
While the trend today is for more transit agencies to introduce open-loop fare payments, closed-loop cards, either in physical form or dematerialized on smartphones and wearables, will be with us for many years to come–though perhaps in a reduced role. That’s according to a recent panel discussion at the Mobility Payments Asia Pacific 2021 conference.
Andy Taylor, senior director, global strategy for Cubic Transportation Systems contended that the MaaS market is at a crossroads and could fail if it doesn’t change course, including putting cities and public agencies firmly in the “driving seat” of MaaS apps.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – As the Covid-19 crisis sows fear among mass transit customers and causes ridership on buses, trains and trams to crash, there is heightened interest in mobile ticketing and other electronic fare payments as a way to ease the concerns and help coax wary riders to return.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With Switzerland’s No. 2 bank, Credit Suisse, expected to participate in Apple Pay, the U.S.-based tech giant continues to chip away at resistance among major European banks to joining its digital payments service.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With the National Football League kicking off its season in a few weeks in the U.S., fans will be using NFC, QR codes and perhaps ultrasonic signals on their mobile devices, in addition to tapping contactless-enabled paper tickets, to attend football games and other events at all 31 NFL stadiums.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Most issuers in the U.S. have so far held back from rolling out contactless or dual-interface cards, but merchant acceptance has been quietly building over the past few years, despite some large U.S. retailers balking at accepting contactless cards and NFC-enabled devices.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight –Payments industry backers suggest that U.S. banks could have an incentive to begin contactless rollouts soon, but in the absence of deadlines from the major payments networks, which are rapidly approaching in other markets, there's no guarantee of rollouts in the U.S. on the horizon.
NFC TIMES Exclusive –As the digital payments ecosystem moves into 2018, it is dealing with many of the same unfulfilled promises, works in progress and unfinished business as in 2017.
NFC TIMES Exclusive – As more U.S. merchants launch their own payments apps, some seem positioned to offer serious competition to Apple Pay and the other NFC “Pays” wallets.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight –Promoters of contextual commerce are looking to a range of connected devices, including smart appliances and such home hubs as Alexa–along with a host of mobile devices–to enable consumers to pay in almost every context. But many challenges remain for what could become a “very disjointed” array of payment options, experts say.
