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.
U.S.-based Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of processor chips to smartphone makers, has entered the NFC market–a move that could substantially expand the availability of NFC-enabled smartphones.
The NFC Forum has adopted a key missing piece of its specifications program, which will enable more thorough testing to avoid interoperability problems.
Even as the NFC Forum attempts to broaden the reach of its NFC touchpoint symbol, known as the N-Mark, rival marks are surfacing, threatening to present consumers with a fragmented array of NFC icons as the technology rolls out.
Standards organizations GlobalPlatform and the NFC Forum will focus on security issues as part of their recently announced memo of understanding, especially to ensure apps on NFC phones don’t compromise the security of secure elements in the devices.
The NFC Forum has relaxed its rules for device makers to display its N-Mark symbol on their products and also is allowing software providers to show the mark, as it seeks to broaden use of the touchpoint symbol on consumer products.
Microsoft is requiring device makers to include a “visual mark” for tablets and PCs supporting NFC and running the software giant’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.
U.S. based Intel, the world’s largest chip maker by revenue, has raised its membership level in the NFC Forum to take a seat on the board, signaling its growing interest in NFC technology.
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.
