NXP Semiconductors has filed a patent infringement suit against rival chip maker Marvell, claiming that the NFC chips supplied by Marvell to Microsoft for use in the Xbox One video gaming console infringe four of its patents... More
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has invested an undisclosed sum in Israeli start-up Visualead, developer of the “visual” QR code technology adopted by Chinese social media site RenRen in May last year... More
Google is responding to the successful launch of Apple Pay by going on the mobile payments acquisition trail, according to industry rumours — and US carrier-owned NFC venture Softcard, which laid off 60 staff last week, could be a key target... More
The US Patent & Trademark Office has published three patent applications from Apple that relate to both Apple Pay and Touch ID biometric verification... More
Future iPhones may use a combination of Touch ID and fingertip motion to protect access, a recent Apple patent application has revealed... More
US quick-service restaurant chain Taco Bell has launched a mobile ordering and payment app that lets customers place their orders through a customisable menu and complete a payment using a stored Taco Bell card, credit card or debit card before arriving at the counter... More
A recently published Apple patent hints that the company is working on future CarPlay functionality that would allow users to lock and unlock car doors, start engines and perform other tasks using their iOS device and geofence technology... More
Buyers of the iPad Air 2 will be the first to use a new Apple SIM that comes preinstalled in the Wi-Fi+Cellular version of the tablet and looks set to be the first implementation of a “SIM Within” patent published in November 2011. More
A newly published Apple patent application provides insights into how the iPhone maker’s new Apple Pay service will work, how the company has optimized the iPhone’s NFC capabilities to ensure the best possible user experience at the point of sale, and how secure payment credentials will be provisioned onto secondary devices such as the Apple Watch... More
Apple has been steadily building a portfolio of patents related to NFC and mobile payments over recent years, from as far back as 2009. NFC World+ has reported on these as they have been published and links are provided here to details of 23 patents covering technical innovations and use cases in payments, mobile marketing, coupon delivery, gifting, event ticketing, content sharing, travel and beyond. More
MasterCard, American Express and Visa have all signed deals with Apple for the launch of a mobile payments service that will make use of an NFC chip built into the next iPhone, due to launch on 9 September, according to reports in a number of publications including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and Re/Code. More
Visa has unveiled a suite of services designed to “facilitate secure payments across a broad range of internet-connected devices and wearables”... More
The USPTO has published a patent application by three Intel engineers that describes an NFC antenna design which makes use of a cascaded coil concept to enable interactions to be performed without a user needing to precisely orientate their phone... More
Chip maker Broadcom has developed a way for multiple NFC antennas to be built into an NFC device, making it possible in future for consumers to conduct NFC interactions without having to orientate their phone in a particular way... More
Apple has applied for a patent on an antenna design that allows NFC signals to be transmitted from both the top and bottom of a mobile phone — front and rear — reducing the need for a user to orientate their device in a particular way when conducting an NFC transaction. More
“We see growing evidence Apple will adopt NFC as a core part of its mobile payments strategy,” a new report from investment firm Morgan Stanley says — and evidence suggests that NXP has already won the contract to supply NFC controller chips for the iPhone 6... More
Blaze Mobile is selling US patent number 8,630,905, an NFC payments patent entitled “Single Tap Transactions using a Secure Element” that dates back to 2007... More
Spain’s Bankinter is to commercially launch an NFC mobile payments service that makes use of host card emulation (HCE) during the second or third quarter of 2014... More
Royal Bank of Canada has introduced an NFC mobile payments service that stores customers’ card details in the cloud... More
A newly published Apple patent application uses a secure element in a mobile phone to store cardholder data, NFC to initiate a transaction and Bluetooth or WiFi to complete the processing of a transaction and return coupons and other information to the customer’s device... More