Archive for January 2009

OPINION: It looks as though the NFC market may be getting set to split into two separate tracks. On the one hand, there will be small-scale but fully standards-compliant pilot trials that carefully test out all the elements of an NFC ecosystem ready for an orderly future expansion. More

Mobilkom Austria and ÖBB, the federal railways group, are to field test an NFC system based on Germany's VDV contactless ticketing standard.  More

Customers can upload their Visa card account to a Nokia 6212 handset containing Visa's payWave contactless application and then make purchases at any of 1,000 merchant locations equipped to handle contactless transactions. More

A small-scale test has taken place in the north-west of England which utilised mobile phones to buy bus tickets using NFC and the UK's ITSO ticketing standard. More

As he reported the payments company's latest trading results in Brussels last week, Visa Europe's chief executive confirmed innovation is key to the company's plans for the coming year. More

The world's second largest retailer, part of the French Ergosum consortium aiming to launch a large scale NFC project by the end of this year, will begin converting its own brand credit/loyalty cards to contactless next month... More

The US startup's closed loop payments and marketing technology has been integrated with Verifone transaction terminals and will migrate to NFC later. More

OPINION: From the beginning transport ticketing has been seen as a key way to kickstart NFC adoption... More

China Unicom and Yucheng Transportation Card Co have jointly introduced an NFC version of Chongqing city's Yucheng Tong card that can be used to make payments on public transport, in cinemas and at shops and restaurants.  More

NFCW has received details of two more NFC products on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, from Cell Idea in Hong Kong and TazTag in France. More

The ease of use of NFC is touted by many observers as one of its key advantages. New research from Mformation confirms just how strong a market driver this could prove to be... More

Have you been wondering about whether you should enter the NFC Forum's global competition? The deadline has now been extended and you can get some last-minute advice from a webcast on January 27. More

Transport for London's new ticketing contract will drive the switch to next generation ticketing, London Underground's managing director has confirmed. More

Near Field Communications World's editor Sarah Clark will be in London next week for Transport Ticketing '09. If you're attending the event or based in the London area, here's your chance to meet Sarah and to make contact with fellow readers. More

OPINION: Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and the current global financial crisis will make it necessary for all of us to be inventive in the way we do business. More

There wasn't much to see in the way of mainstream NFC developments at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show — but some interesting potentially competitive technologies and enabling solutions made the massive Las Vegas event worth casting an eye over. More

Sheetz convenience stores and fleet card operator Wright Express Corporation are running a multi-city trial that lets fleet card holders make fuel purchases at Sheetz locations with their mobile phones. More

The company's patented technology allows an NFC secure element, controller and antenna to be built into SD and microSD cards, making it possible for mobile phone and PDA owners to add near field communication capabilities to their devices by just adding a Tyfone card. More

Orange has been working with smart card and SIM specialist Sagem Orga for more than a year to develop a custom SWP-enabled NFC SIM that is tailored to the mobile operator's requirements. More

NFC handset availability will start to ramp up in 2010 but handsets using the GSM Association's preferred Single Wire Protocol approach to NFC won't be around in volume until 2011 and beyond. More