NFC news in brief • 8 Nov 2010

News in brief from the NFC world and beyond: NXP CEO picks NFC • Nacha cuts out cards • P2P payments set for growth • Bharti Airtel picks up payments license • Facebook Deals a blow • Only 4% have checked out checking in.

NXP CEO Rick Clemmer
CLEMMER: NXP chief executive expects NFC deployment in smartphones to drive demand in 2011

NXP CEO PICKS NFC: Chief executive Rick Clemmer has highlighted NFC as one of the technologies that will drive NXP‘s growth in 2011. Speaking after NXP had announced its financial results for the third quarter, Clemmer said that “the deployment of near field communications (NFC) is smartphones and the use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) as replacements for incandescent bulbs were two applications that would drive demand in 2011”, EE Times reports. “The ramp associated with NFC in smartphones and CFL [compact fluorescent tubes] driver ICs is something we expect in the spring of 2011,” Clemmer explained.

NACHA CUTS OUT CARDS: US electronic payments association Nacha is piloting a system that lets consumers make payments to online merchants directly from their bank account, cutting out the need for a credit/debit card or to store funds in an online payments account, Bank Info Security reports. Secure Vault Payments “works like a one-time credit a consumer might make over the internet to his or her financial institution. The difference: With Secure Vault, the consumer makes a one-time payment to an online merchant. It’s a direct payment, facilitated through the financial institution. And since credit and debit are taken out of the equation, so, too, is interchange, as well as the need for the consumer to provide the merchant with personal financial information.”

P2P PAYMENTS ANALYSED: A new report from Aite Group, based on a survey of 3,190 consumers in the US, UK and Australia, has found that growing adoption of smartphones will be a key driver of mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payments. “The tiny percentage of P2P transactions that are conducted through a mobile device belies the future potential for mobile P2P payments,” says the company’s Ron Shevlin. “Aite Group believes that as smartphone adoption continues to increase — it’s projected to reach 50% in the United States by the end of 2011 — mobile P2P payment activity will increase at the expense of cash and checks.”

BHARTI AIRTEL PICKS UP PAYMENTS LICENSE: Indian mobile network operator Bharti Airtel has become the first operator in the country to be granted a payments licence by the Reserve Bank of India. “Bharti Airtel was granted the licence to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the RBI in this quarter, Times of India reports. “This allows a customer to exchange physical cash for virtual money which can be stored on mobile phone to pay for goods/services for transaction of value less than Rs 5,000.” The operator has also announced it is to introduce a range of own-label handsets for the first time.

FACEBOOK DEALS A BLOW: Social networking giant Facebook has dealt a major blow to the revenue aspirations of location-based advertising providers. The company’s new Facebook Deals allows any business to post rewards that Facebook Places users can instantly redeem at a local outlet— free of charge. Businesses offering a reward to Facebook Places users will also be rewarded by being highlighted in yellow in results pages. Gap, H&M, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Macy’s and the San Francisco 49ers have already signed up for the service.

LATE CHECK-IN: Despite their high profile, only 4% of online Americans have so far used a check-in service such as Foursquare or Gowalla to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby, according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center.

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