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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive: As it prepares to launch its national rollout, the Isis joint venture seeks to simplify the user interface for consumers to conduct payments and redeem offers and rewards with the second version of its mobile wallet.

NFC Times Exclusive: SIM vendors shipped a little more than 31 million NFC SIM cards to mobile operators during the first half of 2013–equaling the number of NFC SIMs during all of 2012–and shipments are projected to hit 80 million for all of 2013, according to figures and forecasts obtained by NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive: As the Isis joint venture gears up for its planned national rollout, NFC Times looks at the view on the ground in its pilot cities of Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, from the perspective of merchants and consumers.

While use by consumers of the Isis Mobile Wallet is believed to have been low, in general, in the pilot cities of Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, at least two issuers appear to be sufficiently convinced of the concept to move forward with Isis on its national rollout.

As the Isis joint venture gears up for a planned commercial expansion, a senior member of the technical staff at its largest member telco, Verizon Wireless, noted that testing, certification and getting the customer experience right has required much work.

Chris Bierbaum, who played a role in early development of the U.S. telco joint venture that would become Isis, has left Sprint as head of mobile commerce to lead mobile initiatives globally for UK-based directories and Internet services company hibü.

The Isis joint venture has announced its long-anticipated U.S. national rollout, which is to begin later this year, with the JV and its member mobile carriers–Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA–deeming the NFC ecosystem and their own Isis mobile-commerce platform ready for a large-scale expansion.

The Isis joint venture continues to gear up for a nationwide launch of its NFC-enabled Isis Mobile Wallet this year and has been in discussions with major U.S. banks along with merchants, NFC Times has learned.

Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations announced Monday it had received an order for 30,000 readers for point-of-sale terminals at retail gasoline stations in North America.

Vending technology company USA Technologies plans to integrate the SmartTap mobile-commerce software into all of the company’s nearly 100,000 NFC-enabled terminals on vending machines nationwide.