Author archive: Mike Clark

Osama Bedier, Google's vice president of Wallet and payments, is to leave the company. Bedier, who joined Google from PayPal in January 2011 to head up the NFC-based Google Wallet service, "has decided to leave... More

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Chinese phone maker BBK's latest device is to come with NFC functionality — and some NFC tags in the box. The Vivo Xplay is powered by quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 running at 1.7GHz and is... More

Sony has announced a new range of Windows 8 laptops that come with NFC. Vaio Fit laptops are available with 14-inch and 15-inch screens and will start at US$649 when they ship later this month.

Inside Secure has reported a fall in revenues of 68% year-on-year for its Mobile NFC division. Revenues were just US$4.5m in the first quarter of 2013, down 61% on the fourth quarter of 2012. "BlackBerry... More

One million NFC TOM (Tag on Metal) phone stickers have been ordered from Identive for "a banking and payment program in Africa", the company has announced. All the stickers will be shipped during the current quarter.

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico has introduced a range of mobile payments terminals that include NFC and biometric verification. The iWB Bio Series devices are aimed at governments and financial institutions distributing payments services in emerging... More

NFC-on-microSD specialist DeviceFidelity has been granted patent number ZL200880107195.2 in China, bringing the company's portfolio up to a total of 40 patents relating to NFC and security technologies. The newly-issued patent covers an NFC based mobile wallet implementation that uses a microSD-based secure element and credentials issued by multiple enterprises.

Identive has announced it has won an order for three million NFC tags from an unnamed retailer. The NFC Forum Type 2 tags "will be used for a mobile retail application in France", says Identive. 800,000 of the tags will be shipped this quarter.

Unattended payments specialist USA Technologies (USAT) has added two new POS devices to its range. Both the ePort G9 and the ePort G10 support NFC payments and are "designed to bring greater functionality and value to business operators as they optimize their cashless payment platforms to develop new sales opportunities and greater operational efficiencies".

Public transportation users in the French city of Strasbourg are being invited by local transit operator CTS to take part in an NFC ticketing pilot. The trial will begin in June 2013.

"NFC handsets have reached a tipping point this year and global volumes will surge an impressive 138% in 2013", according to a new forecast by Strategy Analytics. "Most new LTE phones will launch with NFC in the future," the analysts say.

Turkish mobile network operator Turkcell has added the Urfakart transportation ticketing card to its Turkcell Cüzdan mobile wallet service. To use the service, Turkcell customers in the Sanliurfa region first link their Urfakart to their... More

China UnionPay executive vice president Hongfeng Chai has demonstrated the payments network's Quick Pass contactless payments service in use on an Intel-powered NFC smartphone at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing. The two companies are now working together to develop mobile payments services that make use of both NFC and Intel's Identity Protection Technology.

Aconite's Mobile Application Manager has been selected by "a major European processor" to provide "a low-cost, fast-track enhancement of their existing authorization systems to support the broad range of EMV scripts needed to manage EMV applications on a mobile NFC handset". Aconite's solution will support counter resets, passcode changes and other scripts required to fully implement EMV in a mobile environment, the company says.

Testing specialist Fime has integrated the MasterCard Terminal Integration Process (M-TIP) questionnaire into its Savvi test tool, enabling it to validate that NFC payment terminals are compliant with MasterCard's latest PayPass terminal specification. "The latest requirements from MasterCard support advancements in mobile payments, including features such as PIN entry via a mobile device to authorise a transaction," says Fime.

NFC specialist Nexperts has introduced an NFC mobile wallet that comes with MasterCard Mobile PayPass certification. "The support of Mobile PayPass in our wallet framework eases significantly the time to market for MNOs and banks to issue advanced contactless solutions" says CEO Kurt Schmid.

UL Transaction Security is to develop and run a Mifare Test Centre, offering functional certification services for Mifare contactless cards and Mifare applications running on mobile devices. "The UL Mifare Test Center will guarantee interoperability across third party Mifare implementations in an increasingly global multi-vendor environment," the company says.

Industry veteran Einar Rosenberg has launched a new company that plans to roll out twelve new NFC services over the next year. Creating Revolutions' first service is MyCardNFC, an NFC-powered contact exchange application that combines... More

The HTC First is a mid-range touch screen smartphone that pushes Facebook integration to the front and centre — and includes NFC support. The Android device features Facebook Home, a "mobile experience that puts your... More