Boosted by the results of its just-completed trial in Sweden enabling 28 frequent hotel guests to download room keys to their NFC phones and tap to enter their rooms, vendor Assa Abloy said it is seeking to expand its Mobile Keys service.
LG Electronics is readying the release of a 2G feature phone supporting Near Field Communication, which might be the handset maker’s first commercial NFC model.
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 eight-month pilot is one of the first of its kind enabling guests to check-in on th
Results:
Locking company and trial organizer Assa Abloy announced results of the eight-month trial in June 2011, reporting that more than 90% of the 28 guests who participated said they would use the service if it were available on their cell phones. More than half of the users said they saved at least 10 minutes by avoiding lines at the hotel check-in counter.
About eight in 10 trial participants surveyed said they would like NFC applications on the same phone that let them pay for food, drink and other hotel services, according to the Assa Abloy survey. About 80% also agreed they’d like to receive hotel maps, room service menus and gym and spa information downloaded to their phones.
Just under 30% of respondents said they would choose a phone that supports a mobile-key service for their next handset, according to the company.
Polish mobile operator Polkomtel has not yet launched its planned NFC mobile-payment project–set to start in June with 500 users–but it is already talking about expanding it.
Nokia has quietly pulled the plug on its 6216 NFC phone, which was to be its first commercial model supporting a standard connection to the SIM card for storing payment and ticketing applications, NFC Times has learned.
BARCELONA – Samsung Electronics has introduced its new NFC phone for its first public trial, lending more than 400 units for a demonstration at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Turkcell’s mobile wallet enables subscribers to tap their phones to pay for purchases with a MasterCard PayPass application issued by Turkish banks, including Yapı Kredi and Garanti.
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.
