NFC news in brief

Giesecke & Devrient has announced that its new Taurus NFC SIMs are being used by Italian MVNO Nòverca for financial institution Intesa Sanpaolo's NFC pilot in Milan and Turin.

Samsung has signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysian RFID firm Smartag that will see the two firms working together to bring NFC technology to the Malaysian market. "Together we will work to simplify the Malaysian lifestyle by using the digital wallet for credit, debit, membership and loyalty cards using mobile phones," says Smartag CEO PK Lim.

The upcoming NFC smartphone announced by Panasonic in late 2011 is to be called the Eluga, the company has told attendees at its Panasonic Convention 2012 in Hamburg. The device is billed as a 'global model' handset and is set to spearhead the company's assault on the European smartphone market.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia's CommBank Kaching NFC-enabled mobile payments app has been downloaded 110,761 times in the two months since it was first made available, the bank reports. "The first release of CommBank Kaching is just the beginning of the journey and we are constantly reviewing how to evolve our technology to deliver the best customer experience," says the bank, which last week revealed it had picked Giesecke & Devrient as its TSM.

Chinese manufacturer ZTE has announced an NFC smartphone which it will show at MWC 2012. The ZTE PF200 has a 4.3-inch capacitive touch display, 1.2GHz processor, LTE and runs Android 4.0. The device is ZTE's first own-branded NFC smartphone, though the company also produces the Turkcell-branded T11.

Mobile financial services association Mobey Forum has published Control Points In Mobile Wallets (PDF), the second in a series of white papers exploring issues around the deployment of mobile wallet solutions. "If the mobile wallet is to develop to its full potential, it is important to understand how the mobile wallet landscape can be influenced and in particular how stakeholders can control one or more parts of the ecosystem," says the association.

The Thales OR 500 is a new reader designed for the transportation ticketing market that works with both traditional contactless transit cards and EMV bank cards. "The 500 series can be integrated in greenfield projects or as an upgrade in any regional or nationwide fare collection systems," says the company. The OR 500 will be available by the end of 2012.

The third event in digital agency Isobar's NFC hackathon series is to take place in London over the weekend of 24-25 March. Create London is sponsored by mobile network operator O2, is free to attend and offers participants the chance of winning a development fund kick-starter to help take their idea to market.

Orange Business Services has produced an infographic that shows consumers six ways NFC will change our world. "If you think NFC is limited to making small, cashless payments, think again," says the telecomms company.

NFC World is pleased to announce the launch of a Linkedin group for readers to connect, network and exchange expertise on near field communication technology and its applications. The aim is to keep discussion in the group useful and informative, with as little distraction as possible, and NFC World's editors will be on hand to help. You can join the NFC World LinkedIn group here. We're looking forward to meeting you!

Poland's MultiBank and mBank have begun the second phase of their NFC pilot, opening up the trial to consumers for the first time by providing competition winners with an iCarte accessory they can attach to their iPhone to make mobile payments. Some 35,000 points of sale in the country are currently equipped to accept contactless payments and this number is expected to rise to more than 200,000 by the end of 2015.

Jeremy Belostock, head of NFC at Nokia for the last four years, has left the company to take up a new post at mailing solutions firm Neopost. Belostock's departure continues an on-going exodus of Nokia NFC staff and follows a series of exits over the last few months by the handset maker's lead delegate to the NFC Forum, head of NFC business development for the Americas and VP of industry collaborations.

Australia's largest bank has chosen Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) as its trusted service manager. Commonwealth Bank launched its first NFC service, Commbank Kaching, in October 2011. The service lets iPhone users send money to their Facebook friends, and email contacts as well as make payments in stores via an add-on NFC case. The bank is now "adding multiple mobile phone-based payment options to its range of mobile banking services," says G&D.

Visa has added mobile services to its Visa DPS issuer processing platform. The new features, developed by Monitise, allow US financial institutions to offer account holders the ability to monitor account history and balances, transfer funds between accounts and receive near real time transaction alerts on their mobile devices. Additional services including support for NFC payments, mobile check deposit, mobile offers and Visa's V.me digital wallet are in development.

GlobalPlatform is to publish a series of guides that aim to explain in simple terms the technology developments it is working on and how they will benefit the industry. The first focuses on the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a secure area that resides in the main processor of a smart phone or other mobile device and ensures that sensitive data is stored, processed and protected in a trusted environment.

A beta version of Google's Chrome web browser for Android phones, released in the Android Market yesterday, requests user permission to control near field communication features upon installation. Chrome runs on Android 4.0 devices and is deeply synchronised with the user's desktop browser. The NFC permission opens up the possibility for web-based apps to communicate with tags, cards and devices.

The marketing campaign for the 2013 Lexus GS sport sedan is to include an NFC tagged insert "in select copies" of the April edition of Wired magazine. "The insert will allow NFC-enabled smartphone users to view the mobile site upon placing the phone on top of the insert," says the luxury car maker. "Other smartphone users can access the mobile site by entering the URL in their browsers."

The European Payments Council has published an updated edition of its mobile payments white paper and made it available for public consultation. "To ensure that the EPC's work in the area of m-payments best meets industry and consumer needs, we invite all interested parties to review the second edition of the white paper and share their comments by 23 March 2012," says the council's Dag-Inge Flatraaker.

US Galaxy Nexus owners are reporting that they can now install and use Google Wallet on stock handsets from AT&T, simply by downloading the app from Android Market. Fan blog Droid Life has also detailed an easy way to install the NFC wallet app on the LTE variant of the Galaxy Nexus from Verizon.

Testing tool specialist Collis has launched a test suite that can be used to perform functional testing of NFC payments applications based on the Visa Mobile Contactless Payment Specifications (VMCPS). The company has also appointed Toronto-based B2 Payment Solutions as the exclusive distributor of its payment test tools in the US and Canada.