Author archive: Sarah Clark

The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation into the planned NFC joint venture between Everything Everywhere, Telefónica and Vodafone UK which will delay launch until after the London Olympics and casts doubts over the timetable for the introduction of similar projects in a number of other European countries. More

The Emirates Identity Authority is to work with mobile network operator Etisalat to develop a new version of the United Arab Emirates' national ID card that will allow both UAE nationals and expatriates living in the country to store their ID on an NFC mobile phone. More

Students at the US university are using NFC-enabled mobile phones to gain access to dorms, academic buildings and administrative offices. More

The food company's baby nutrition division in Singapore has released findings from a pilot project which has seen 400 NFC tags being placed in supermarkets, clinics and in homes to provide new mothers with information on a range of parenting and nutritional topics. More

NFC4Retail, which provides merchants with a suite of NFC apps designed to improve the in-store shopping experience, is now available in 21 countries. The service costs US$20 per store per month and is free of charge during an initial public beta period. More

Vodafone, 2degrees and Telecom New Zealand have partnered with the operator of the country's debit card and ATM networks to introduce a central TSM platform that will allow the carriers to "continue to compete vigorously for customers by developing their own innovative services on top of the open platform infrastructure provided by the TSM". More

Two of the twenty teams which took part in last weekend's Isobar Create London NFC app development event have received kick-starter funding they will be able to use to turn their apps into commercial products. More

The number of NFC phones shipped will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.8% between now and 2016, according to a new forecast from Berg Insight, taking the number of phones shipped from 2011's 30m to 700m in 2016.

The imaging company's new NFC module is designed to make it easy for consumers to order photos from in-store kiosks by simply selecting the images they want to print on their NFC device and then tapping it to the kiosk. More

Malaysian mobile network operator Maxis is to enable iPhone users to take part in its FastTap NFC payments service "soon", using an add-on NFC case. Maxis FastTap, launched in April 2009, was the world's first commercial... More

The NFC Forum and Wima have announced the finalists for their jointly-run Tap Into Innovation: NFC Global Competition 2012. This year's competition attracted three times as many entries as the previous contest in 2010, the organisers... More

Vivotech has completed a Series D funding round, bringing the total the NFC and contactless specialist has raised to date to US$96m. New sales figures for the company's POS terminal business have also been released.... More

A software development kit (SDK) for the Cipurse open transit ticketing standard, developed by the OSPT Alliance, is now available. "The Cipurse SDK enables developers to quickly bring a wide range of solutions to market that address the need for advanced security while offering unmatched implementation flexibility," says the OSPT's Laurent Cremer. "We eagerly anticipate a wave of innovation in transit fare collection systems."

A survey conducted in six European countries has found that consumers like the idea of interactive out-of-home advertising — but they expect a 'value exchange' in return for interacting with advertising and the most popular incentives are money or entertainment. More

The US House of Representatives' Financial Services Subcommitee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit has held a hearing on "The Future of Money: How Mobile Payments Could Change Financial Services". Five people gave testimony to the... More

The computer software giant is to use its own symbol to show that a Windows 8 device has NFC functionality and to indicate to a user where the NFC antenna is located. More

Italian mobile network operator Wind has begun an internal NFC pilot, in collaboration with Samsung. Wind employees taking part in the trial are being equipped with a Samsung Galaxy S II NFC phone they can use to... More

Swedish ecommerce platform provider Jetshop has provided NFC World with the preliminary results of a landmark project designed to find out how the ability for shoppers to use their mobile phone to make a purchase directly from a printed poster will affect traditional retailing. More

Google is topping up Google Wallet prepaid card accounts with an extra US$5 credit, The Verge reports. The perk is designed to compensate users for loss of service while the company searched for a solution to a hack that allowed unauthorised use of an existing prepaid card balance if someone recovered a lost Android phone without a screen lock.

The April edition of Wired magazine, now available on US newsstands, includes an advertisement for the 2013 Lexus GS that incorporates an NFC tag. The tag enables readers with an Android NFC phone to launch a mobile... More