NFC Forum partners with National Retail Federation, APSCA and Open Mobile Alliance

The NFC standards organisation has signed partnership deals with the NRF’s ARTS division as well as the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association and the Open Mobile Alliance.

NFC Forum
FORUM: Collaborations will lead to far-reaching benefits for consumers

The NFC Forum has signed partnership agreements with the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association (Apsca), the Open Mobile Alliance and the Association for Retail Technology Standards (Arts), a division of US retail association the National Retail Federation (NRF).

“The interest in collaboration from this range of industries — retailing, smart cards, and mobile services — demonstrates how widely the value of NFC technology is recognized, and it points to the far-reaching benefits consumers can expect from broad adoption of NFC,” says NFC Forum chairman Koichi Tagawa.

The partnership agreements signed by the NFC Forum are each tailored to the interests of the participating organizations and their members:

  • The NFC Forum’s memorandum of understanding with Apsca, a non-profit association that provides information, consultancy, guidance, and networking to organizations in the smart card industry in the Asia Pacific region, will see the two organisations sharing information and coordinating non-technical activities such as training courses, case studies, white papers, research, webcasts, and events.
  • The NFC Forum-Arts memorandum of understanding will focus on information exchange and education, including publishing joint papers that would highlight specific case studies and implementation issues for retailing, sharing statistics and research, and educating and communicating with retailers through the NRF’s established communication channels.
  • The co-operation agreement with the Open Mobile Alliance will see the two associations working together to establish and promote global standards in the wireless telecommunications and internet domain. The two will also work on NFC-enabled devices and related applications, including diagnosing problems and monitoring device performance over the air.

“Arts is excited to bring its existing knowledge and expertise to this partnership with the NFC Forum,” said Richard Mader, executive director of Arts. “Retailers will greatly benefit from this collaboration as we work together to guide the successful implementation of mobile platforms.”

“Since 2005, many Apsca meetings and activities have focused on NFC business issues and have included the NFC Forum and its members,” adds Apsca chairman Greg Pote. “Formalizing the working relationship between Apsca and the NFC Forum will facilitate joint activities, provide more opportunities to promote and advance NFC technology, and support companies that are members of both organizations.”

“OMA is pleased to see that our device management, diagnostics, and monitoring specifications are relevant and useful to the NFC Forum’s standardization efforts,” said Fred Harrison, chairman of the board of the Open Mobile Alliance. “With billions of devices already using OMA specifications in the market, it is good to see that our work is relevant in supporting new technologies and new markets. For OMA members as well as the wider mobile industry, the market for near field communication-enabled devices offers vast new opportunities for processing transactions, distributing content, and communication using new channels and devices. This is welcome and exciting news for OMA.”

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