Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA announced their joint venture today, with plans to introduce NFC-based mobile payment in selected markets during the next 18 months.
An announcement by major U.S. mobile carriers of their joint venture to launch NFC-based mobile payment and other services, including the naming of a CEO, is imminent, according to sources and news reports.
Near Field Communication was the talk of Web 2.0 Summit early on, as Google announced that it will be included in a forthcoming phone, and powered by the next version of Android. (InformationWeek)
Nokia will add NFC to "some existing (Symbian) devices" early next year, Nokia’s senior vice president for smartphones, Jo Harlow, said in an interview published this week.
While Japan’s dominant mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, declined to confirm a press report that it would move to standard NFC phones starting in 2013, most market observers agree the pressure on DoCoMo to adopt NFC will become too strong to resist.
In one of the first pilots of its kind, guests and employees of the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, will be able to check-in, receive their door keys and enter their rooms, all with their NFC phones.
The joint venture formed by U.S. mobile carriers to launch NFC-based mobile payment has chosen a trusted service manager for pilots it plans next year, but the venture still may be looking for a CEO, NFC Times has learned.
While the head of innovation for the popular Starbucks prepaid payment card declares that he is a "big fan of NFC,"the giant coffee-shop chain is not about to wait for NFC phones before introducing mobile payment, the manager told NFC Times.
A recent mobile-payment document from China’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile, makes no mention of the proprietary RF-SIM technology the giant telco had been promoting for mobile payment earlier this year, NFC Times has learned.
United Arab Emirates mobile operator du is weighing options for the possible launch of mobile payment with banks, along with other services, using NFC bridge technologies to try to turn popular smartphones, such as the iPhone, into payment devices.
Major NFC chip makers predict 40 million to 50 million NFC phones or more will be on the market by the end of 2011, along with a smaller number of NFC bridge devices.
Chunghwa Telecom has unveiled its NFC-Bluetooth "dongle," a large key ring designed to give NFC functionality to certain smartphones via a Bluetooth connection.
South Korea has got its first phone equipped with NFC or Near Field Communication technology. KT today unveiled the SHW-A170K, which sports NFC technology and uses NFC compatible USIM. (Samsung Hub)
A former AT&T manager involved in mobile payment sees battles ahead between the big U.S. mobile carriers and Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide, as they fight it out for consumers in the emerging mobile-payment market.
Visa Europe plans to launch trials of mobile payment over the next few months using NFC bridge technologies, with a "view to commercializing" some of the devices, according to Visa Europe’s head of mobile.
Nokia today began shipping its first smartphone with NFC inside, the C7, but the phone requires a software upgrade for the NFC functionality to work, NFC Times has learned.
Mobile operators in yet another country are planning to test the waters for a possible future launch of their own mobile-payment scheme at the retail point of sale.
Transit agencies in some of the largest cities in the United States and Europe are moving forward at varying speeds toward accepting credit, debit and prepaid cards to collect fares onboard buses and at metro gates.
Delays by handset manufacturers have postponed Etisalat's plans to launch Near Field Communication technology, which allows users to make contactless payments using their mobile phones, in the UAE by more than a year, a telecom operator official said. (Gulf News)
The United Kingdom’s largest mobile operator is intent on “seeding the market” with new NFC phones by offering longer-term commitments to handset makers, a business development head at the telco said this week.
Payments industry veteran Patrick Gauthier has begun work this month as head of market intelligence at PayPal, while ex-MasterCard Worldwide innovation chief Joshua Peirez–who sources said had been up for the job as CEO of the U.S. mobile carrier joint venture–moves to Dun & Bradstreet.
Barclaycard confirmed it is working on contactless stickers and wristbands in addition to its contactless card and planned NFC mobile-payment rollouts.
BARCELONA – Spanish bank Bankinter plans to launch a small NFC trial within the next month with its mobile virtual network operator, Bankinter Mobile.
Large U.S. payment card processor First Data Corp. hopes to become a major mobile-payments player in the United States and beyond, but there are questions surrounding the experience of the new technology partner First Data has hired to help it bring m-payment services to the market.
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.
