The St. Petersburg Metro in Russia will launch a trial this month enabling riders to tap their phones to pay for fares, with plans calling for a rollout to users of all St Petersburg public transport in 2011.
TAIPEI – Taiwan’s largest mobile operator, Chunghwa Telecom, plans to issue at least 10,000 NFC "dongles" that subscribers will be able to tap to make retail payments, download coupons, view exhibit information and to ride metro trains and buses.
Visa Inc. is participating in a test program started by rival MasterCard that will let consumers pay for some New York subway tickets by tapping a credit card or a smartphone at the turnstile. (Reuters)
SINGAPORE – South Korean mobile operator KT Corp. plans to launch NFC services in mid-October with more than 50,000 Samsung phones and intends to add an NFC smartphone model from LG Electronics in March supporting the Android operating system, KT’s Eun-Seok Kim disclosed today.
Nokia is apparently offering a glimpse of its first application–a digital-receipt system–for what is expected to be its new line of NFC phones next year.
The three largest banks and three largest mobile operators in the Netherlands today announced their intention to form a joint venture to launch mobile payment, using full NFC phones.
Wells Fargo bank will reportedly test contactless-mobile payment this fall in association with Visa Inc., using microSD cards and a payWave application onboard.
The Ministry of Information Technology and Industry is looking to rally its nascent mobile payment industry around a single technology standard with the hope of cashing in on the world's largest mobile population. (TMCnet)
U.S.-based Broadcom, a maker of chips for smartphones and other consumer electronics, has finalized its acquisition of UK-based NFC company Innovision and will likely have a product announcement by early next year.
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher behind Consumer Reports magazine, is calling on federal regulators to take measures guaranteeing that existing consumer protections are applied to new mobile payment solutions. (FierceMobileContent)
A deal between loyalty-scheme operator Zapa Technology and Ireland’s largest merchant acquirer, AIB Merchant Services, could see Zapa’s contactless stickers rolled out more widely in Ireland and also gain a foothold in the United Kingdom.
Major U.S. mobile carriers planning to launch an NFC-based payment service have been ramping up hiring and are preparing to order NFC phones, but are still looking for a CEO, sources told NFC Times.
U.S mobile carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA hope to launch precommercial trials of their planned mobile-payment service in the third quarter of 2011, sources told NFC Times.
NatWest bank is dropping out of its O2 Money partnership with mobile operator Telefónica O2, leaving the telco looking for a new partner with which to offer prepaid payment cards and, later, NFC services in the competitive UK market, NFC Times has learned.
Hong Kong's Octopus Holdings has admitted to selling its customers' personal information since January 2006 and pocketing HK$44 million (US$5.7 million) from doing so. (ZDNet Asia)
While major U.S. banks and mobile operators are not apparently working together on mobile payment, they have attended meetings together convened by U.S. central bank officials, who want the parties to reach common ground on standards, infrastructure and business models.
UK-based NFC technology company Innovision announced today its CEO, David Wollen, has left the company, as the acquisition of Innovision by U.S.-based chip maker Broadcom moves forward.
The New York-based transit guru behind the Toronto Transit Commission's controversial move toward “open payment” says he believes the electronic fare system would cost Toronto “a small fraction” of the cost of adopting the province’s Presto smart card. (Toronto Star)
With interest growing in NFC but few NFC phone models yet on the market, such NFC bridge technologies as contactless stickers, microSDs and SIMs with flexible antennas are attracting more and more attention from service providers and telcos.
France-based Gemalto announced it is serving as trusted service manager for what appears to be a small NFC mobile-payment trial in Thailand involving a bank and mobile operator.
U.S.-based mobile-payment start-up RFinity is adopting passive-contactless stickers for its payment project in and around a university campus in Idaho, changing an earlier plan to expand its pilot using contactless microSD cards.
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.
