NFC news in brief

Members of the Canadian Bankers Association reached agreement on Friday on how NFC mobile payments will be handled in Canada, says The Globe and Mail, opening the way for the first commercial deployments to take place. These are likely to take the form of partnerships between financial institutions and carriers, the newspaper reports. An official announcement of the guidelines to be adopted may be made as soon as today.

The NFC functionality in the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S III is provided by NXP, the NFC chip specialist has announced. The S III uses NXP's PN65 solution, which provides it with both an NFC controller and an embedded secure element. The device also includes a secure execution environment within its main application processor, provided by Giesecke & Devrient.

American Express has extended its deal with US carrier-led NFC joint venture Isis. The move will enable AmEx's US consumer, small business and Serve prepaid cardholders to load a virtual version of their cards onto an Isis Mobile Wallet.

Antenna specialist Taoglas has launched two off-the-shelf 'peel and stick' NFC antennas. The FXR.01, a flexible polymer antenna designed for use in M2M devices, measures 54mm by 37mm by 0.1mm and provides an average read distance of 5cm. The smaller FXT.01 is designed for use in passive tags and requires no additional matching components. The company also offers custom NFC antenna design services.

The LG Optimus Elite is now available to pre-order from Virgin Mobile USA for US$149.99. The NFC device will begin shipping on 15 May with Google Wallet included — the first time that a US carrier other than Sprint has offered consumers a mobile phone with official support for the search giant's NFC payments and offers service.

European versions of the new Samsung Galaxy S III NFC phone are to be the first mobile phones to ship with G&D's Mobicore technology. Mobicore will provide the Galaxy S III with a secure execution environment within its main application processor that can be used for security-sensitive applications such as mobile payments authentication, digital rights management and corporate VPN access.

Philippe Martineau has left NFC and contactless chip specialist Inside Secure, which recently floated on the NYSE Euronext Paris stock exchange, to join NFC microSD specialist DeviceFidelity as VP of business development. Martineau had been in charge of Inside's NFC business since 2006. Fabrice Jogand-Coulomb has also joined DeviceFidelity, from SanDisk, as VP of product management.

Nav Bains, the GSMA's high profile business lead for NFC, has left the carrier trade association to join NFC supplier Vivotech as VP of business development for telecommunications and channel management. "This is a defining time for the deployment and adoption of NFC technology worldwide, and Vivotech's collaborative approach to improve adoption and overcome industry barriers is one that I fully support," says Bains.

A new NFC service called BlackBerry Share has been demonstrated at BlackBerry World this week, Pocket-Lint reports. "BlackBerry users with an NFC-enabled handset can now share apps with their friends by simply tapping the two phones together," the publication explains. "Each user will receive a list of the apps their friend has downloaded from BlackBerry App World. Just press the 'share' option when you're in the application store itself."

The European Commission has prolonged the deadline for a decision on whether to give the go ahead to the UK carrier-led 'Project Oscar' NFC joint venture, Bloomberg reports. The decision will now not be made until 19 September, 17 days later than originally planned. "The EU's merger control authority didn't give a reason for the extension," says Bloomberg. Objectors to the venture included Google and PayPal, according to the Financial Times.

The 4G LTE version of the BlackBerry Playbook, expected to hit the market later this year, will come with NFC, RIM has confirmed at BlackBerry World this week, Canadian Reviewer reports.

A total of 16m NFC SIMs were shipped globally in 2011, according to the SIMalliance's annual review of the global SIM market. NFC SIMs include an NFC secure element as well as standard SIM card functionality and are used by mobile network operators as the secure area in an NFC-enabled mobile phone.

Google has been granted a patent for transferring application state information from one device to another via NFC, a system which is similar to the company's Android Beam service. The patent outlines methods to allow a user to switch from one device to another while continuing to work with the same application or content. "It is easy to read email from a smart phone but difficult to reply due to the size limitations on the phone keyboard," explains the application. "A user may start a draft of a message on a phone, but prefer to finish the draft using a tablet."

A new version of RIM's BlackBerry Music Gateway includes NFC pairing support, allowing BlackBerry NFC phone users to stream music from their phone to a home or car stereo. The Verge has a hands-on review of the US$49.99 device.

New Zealand carrier 2degrees is to announce an NFC transportation ticketing pilot in the city of Wellington this week, the Dominion Post reports. Commuters will be able to use their NFC phones to pay for bus fares, as an alternative to the existing Snapper contactless cards, says the report. It will be the second NFC ticketing pilot announced for New Zealand this week, following the news that Telecom New Zealand, Westpac and Paymark are to test NFC in Auckland.

Hospitality payments processing specialist Shift4 has added support for payments made via NFC phones equipped with Google Wallet. The solution includes swipe-ahead functionality, says Shift4, meaning that "customers can swipe their cards (or touch their phones) and then enter their PIN (or signature) before the merchant finishes ringing up the order. Once the order is completed, customers simply approve the amount, get their receipt, and are on their way. In busy retail environments, the short time saved by this option quickly adds up."

BlackBerry NFC phone users can now check into locations via NFC, as well as share places and tips with each other and Android NFC phone users, with the addition of NFC support to the BlackBerry edition of Foursquare. The check-in service added NFC to its Symbian app in November 2011 and to its Android app in February 2012.

Apple has applied for a patent covering processes for gifting digital content to friends using transmission methods including NFC, according to Patently Apple. The iPhone maker's patent application outlines a two-step confirmation process: Users can choose to give a song, for example, and then tap on a friend's device to send a gift. A confirmation message is then sent back to the giver's device and the gift is charged to the giver's account.

The Chinese mobile payment market is expected to be worth more than US$80bn with some 441m active users by 2015, according to new research from Kapronasia. China has already surpassed the US as the biggest smartphone market worldwide, though penetration is still less than 10% of the total 900m mobile phone users and allows plenty of room for growth, says the "Mobile Payments in China" report.

Denizbank has become the fourth Turkish bank to sign up for Turkcell's Cep-T Cüzdan NFC mobile wallet platform. The bank's customers can now apply for a Denizbank prepaid "card" via SMS, have the card provisioned to an NFC-enabled mobile phone over-the-air and begin using it to make mobile payments straight away. Business customers can also take advantage of the new service.