NFC World

Google has found a fix for the exploit that allowed access to Google Wallet prepaid card balances and has turned back on the the ability to issue new cards. More

The telecoms giant has chosen the SAP subsidiary to provide a mobile wallet solution that it will begin introducing in Europe and Latin America during the first half of 2012. More

Only 1% of interactions with the French NFC specialist's AdTag platform are conducted via an NFC phone, but NFC users account for 8% of all interactions, the company has found. More

The semiconductor giant has launched WiLink 8.0, a new family of all-in-one combo chips that include an integrated NFC controller chip and come "paired and pre-tested" with embedded secure element chips from both Infineon and NXP. More

The Finnish R&D company's HearMeFeelMe project focused on how NFC could be used to improve the way elderly and visually impaired people interact with the world around them, including a system that allows product information to be recorded on an NFC tag and then read back to the user via an NFC phone. More

"To address an issue that could have allowed unauthorized use of an existing prepaid card balance if someone recovered a lost phone without a screen lock, tonight we temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards," says Google Wallet VP Osama Bedier. More

The latest Google Wallet hack is the first to impact users of stock Android phones and allows anyone who obtains a lost or stolen device which does not have a screen lock set up to gain access to and spend the owner's prepaid card balance. More

"We believe the year ended with the overall industry achieving about a 10% attach rate of NFC solutions to the 445m smartphones shipped in 2011, albeit below our original expectations of about a 16% attach rate," the chip maker's CEO has told analysts during an earnings call for its end of year financial results. More

The Japanese firm has developed a field service and asset management system that integrates with Salesforce, allowing data gathered by technicians reading NFC tags in the field to be automatically posted back to the CRM system.  More

Nearly 80% of the world's top 50 airlines say they plan to be providing NFC services in three years' time, according to a survey conducted by airline IT provider Sita, but there are technical challenges that still need to be resolved before NFC mobile boarding passes can become the norm. More

The prospectus for Inside Secure's IPO this month shows that the company made US$47m from the sale of NFC chips in 2011, that these were mainly delivered to RIM for use in BlackBerry NFC smartphones and that Inside believes it now has a share of close to 50% of the overall market for NFC chips for mobile phones. More

Twelve merchants in the Bay Area are taking part in a pilot trial of an NFC digital receipt system that works with a US$50 device and has no transaction charges. More

"Financial institutions will have a great opportunity to capitalize on this by easily complementing their card programs without having to make major infrastructure changes to their existing processes," says the card giant's Russell St John. More

Two movie theatres in Sydney, Australia are pilot testing QkR, a mobile app that lets customers place orders on their smartphone via NFC or QR codes and then have their order delivered to their seat. More

A campaign for travel app HotelTonight, which combined promotional videos shown on digital screens with the ability to download the app via NFC, QR code, Bluetooth or WiFi, saw a small but promising number of interactions via NFC, says the mobile marketing platform provider. More

Samsung has signed a deal with a Spanish university to develop and pilot test the use of NFC phones to track student attendance. More

The Taiwanese semiconductor supplier's NFC controller chip is to be used in an Android handset made by Tianyu for the Chinese market and a feature phone designed for B2B applications which is being introduced next month by a UK customer of handset maker Fly. More

The payments giant has set out its plans for moving the US from magnetic stripe card technology to chip cards and NFC phones. The plans include incentives for merchants, integrated customer loyalty programmes and support for dynamic authentication technologies. More

The access control specialist's NFC campus pilot is now complete, all participants are reporting positive results and a video showing the system in action has been produced. More

The US Federal Trade Commission is inviting comments from industry representatives, consumer groups, technology providers and academics ahead of a mobile payments workshop it will host in Washington, DC on 26 April. More