NFC news in brief

Mobile network Orange has joined the NFC Patent Licensing Program, a patent pool run by France Brevets and launched in June with Inside Secure. "Our licensees will benefit, in addition to key patents brought by Inside Secure, to many NFC patents brought by Orange," says Jean-Charles Hourcade, general manager of France Brevets. "We encourage other relevant patent holders to join our program to simplify the industrial deployment of NFC products and services."

Paris-based Mexican fast food restaurant Chido has put in Airtag's Airfid NFC-compatible customer loyalty programme. After registration on the web customers collect loyalty points when they identify themselves to an in-store terminal with a 2d barcode printed on a membership card, an NFC sticker or their Passe Navigo transport card.

The next iPhone is currently undergoing its "third stage engineering verification test" and will be released in late September or early October, according to BGR. "We can also confirm that NFC hardware is present in the phones as well," says the tech blog.

Malaysian transit card issuer Touch 'n Go will begin pilot testing an NFC payments service in collaboration with mobile network operator Maxis and CIMB Bank in the next two months, news agency Bernama reports. "After six months we will offer the service with other telecommunication companies too," says CEO Abdul Karim Md Lassim. Touch 'n Go has invested MYR 500,000 (US$158,000) in the project to date.

Cambodian mobile money transfer provider Wing plans to begin testing NFC later this year, The Phnom Penh Post reports. "What we really want to tackle here is near field communication like the Oyster card in London or similar services offered in Japan and Australia," says COO Anthony Perkins.

DeviceFidelity has been granted a European patent covering technology underlying its iCaisse NFC add-on for Apple devices. "Following patents granted in the US for this solution, our microSD NFC technology, our multi-institution mobile wallet and our NFC antenna technology, this European patent is yet another important addition to our portfolio," says the company CEO and co-founder Deepak Jain.

Test equipment specialist Comprion has introduced a testing solution that simulates complex over-the-air (OTA) use cases so that communication errors can be detected before service rollouts. "If one of the involved components fails, the whole OTA communication chain breaks down," says the company. "A failure therefore causes tremendous costs."

ATM maker Diebold has joined smart card and secure element standards body GlobalPlatform. "We will use our involvement in GlobalPlatform to proactively plan for technology changes that might impact automated teller machines," says the company's Mark Reinart. "This will enable us to advance our solutions services around technological improvements."

Tagstand's NFC Task Launcher app has been used to execute over one million actions, reports Techcrunch. "Users changed WiFi and Bluetooth settings 300,000 times, 176,000 applications were launched, phones were set to silent or vibrate 150,000 times, 12,000 songs were played, 10,000 alarms were set, and mobile hotspots were set up 8,000 times," says the tech publication.

Israel-based contactless technology developer On Track Innovations has been granted two new patents. US patent 8,195,236, "Retrofit contactless smart SIM functionality in mobile communicators" covers adding NFC to mobile phones with a SIM+antenna add-on, while US patent 8,186,602, "Multi-application contactless smart card", deals with supporting multiple applications or payment mechanisms on a single contactless device.

Mobile operator TeliaSonera has invested in Stockholm-based mobile payments specialist Accumulate, which supplied the technology underpinning the Swedish networks' WyWallet service announced last week. "Our partnership with Accumulate is a result of increased interest in making transactions with the mobile phone," says TeliaSonera's Kennet Rådne. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

SES RFID Solutions has announced a new range of NFC stickers designed to go on mobile phones. The German RFID specialist's NFC mobile phone stickers are available in three different sizes, are just 0.69mm thick, and have a ferrite backing layer to allow mounting on metal surfaces.

Google reps have been spotted demonstrating Google Wallet to customers in central London department store Selfridges, NFC World has learned. As part of the demonstration the Googlers paid for the shoppers' purchases, echoing the initial promotion of the NFC payments system in the US.

Oberthur Technologies has acquired Boston-based mobile payments specialist MoreMagic. Oberthur plans to combine the company's technology with its existing NFC and TSM offerings to create a comprehensive suite of mobile commerce and financial services solutions, including a secured mobile wallet infrastructure and end-to-end NFC service.

Targobank, part of the French Crédit Mutuel group, and E-Plus, Germany's third largest mobile network operator, have announced plans to work together to test NFC payments. The partners will begin with a pilot test using MasterCard PayPass stickers that attach to users' mobile phones from late summer 2012.

Russian Post has signed an agreement with MasterCard to jointly develop and commercialise a range of "innovative financial products". As a first step, 2,000 of Russian Post's 42,000 post offices will be equipped to accept PayPass contactless payments. Pilot tests of MasterCard Mobile and MasterCard MoneySend will be conducted and the potential of NFC mobile payments will also be investigated.

Orange France is to issue NFC SIMs to all its 27m subscribers, making it the first carrier in Europe to deploy NFC-enabled SIM cards nationally. Gemalto's UpTeq NFC SIMs have been picked for the initial rollout.

French mobile network operators Orange, Bouygues Télécom, SFR and NRJ Mobile have announced that more than one million Cityzi NFC phones have now been sold. First launched in the city of Nice in May 2010 with just one feature phone, 18 Cityzi NFC mobile phone models are now available in France.

Google's Nexus 7 tablet, launched earlier today, contains a PN65 NFC controller from NXP. The chip features an embedded secure element to support secure NFC transactions such as payments, ticketing, and access control.

Google has announced two new NFC features will be available in the Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean' version of its Android Beam service. Users will now be able to send photos and videos from one Android device to another by tapping two NFC devices together, with the link initiated via NFC before handing over to Bluetooth for the transfer. They will also be able to pair with and connect to NFC Bluetooth devices with a touch.