NFC Times Exclusive Insight – NFC and contactless vendor On Track Innovations has filed new patent infringement lawsuits against U.S. telcos AT&T and Verizon Wireless, less than a week after announcing a settlement with T-Mobile USA in a patent infringement suit it filed in 2012.
NFC Times Exclusive Insight – France-based Gemalto estimates it is losing around €30 million (US$33.8 million) in revenue per quarter from the closing of the Softcard mobile-payments service in the U.S. last March–a setback that will end up costing the vendor nearly €100 million in lost sales this year and around €50 million in profit.
NFC Times Premium Content (Free): The Isis joint venture and member mobile operators officially launched their Isis Mobile Wallet today, with the new Android wallet app now available for subscribers of all three Isis telcos and NFC SIMs in thousands of carrier shops.
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.
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 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.
As Google readies the launch of the next version of its wallet, expected to feature the addition of a physical payment card, other mobile-commerce players, including Google Wallet partner Sprint, are gearing up with their own offers.
It's been nearly a month since the launch of the large Isis Mobile Wallet trial in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, and so far merchants are reporting limited use of Isis by consumers, interviews by NFC Times have found.
One or more issuers are privately complaining about fees that the Isis joint venture is seeking to charge to host their payment applications in the Isis Wallet, NFC Times has learned.
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.
