Christian Estrosi, the French minister for industry, has announced funding running into ‘several million euros’ for 13 innovation projects in the NFC and RFID fields.

The projects winning funding include:

• Veolia, the public transport operator for the Nice Côte-d’Azur urban area and which operates in 28 countries, has received funding to develop BPass+, a method of storing a rechargeable transport ticketing pass on an NFC phone
• Gemalto has won funding for MoBEMo, a project designed to enable businesses to transfer a variety of contactless badges, used for functions such as access control and canteen payments amongst others, to an NFC phone
• Cassis International is being funded to develop NFC SCM, an interoperable and standardized system for managing tickets and coupons on an NFC phone
• Cassis has also gained funding for the NFC 2UI project that aims to develop a single user interface, described as a ‘wallet menu’, that could be used on all NFC phones, regardless of platform
• Nice Future Campus has won funding to enable it to carry out testing of a multi-function NFC-based campus card solution at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis
• Connecthings has won funding for Smart Muse, a visitor information system for museums that will deliver contextualised, multimedia information on particular works of art to a visitor’s NFC phone and will be tested at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and in Vieux Nice, the city’s old town.
• Orange has won funding for Must, an NFC programming interface for Android devices that will be tested at Mont Saint-Michel.
• Atos Worldline has won funding for Altess, a project to develop an open platform that will enable secure internet transactions to be delivered via a contactless payment card and a low cost reader.
• Apologic has won funding for Matrice, a project to develop and test a system for porting the currently paper-based Chèques Emploi Service Universels (CESU) service, which makes it easier for those employing domestic staff for just a few hours a week to manage their tax liabilities, to mobile phones
• Lamap has won funding for STAM-RFID, an RFID solution designed to enable hospitals to improve their ability to track medical records
• Jewellry chain Cléor has won funding for its Vitrine Intelligente (intelligent window), an RFID-based real time stock tracking system
• MPE Technology has won funding for Digiprice, a solution for handling real time inventory checking, dynamic labeling, anti-theft processes and customer loyalty all on one platform
• SVA Jean Rozé has won funding for IDViandes, an RFID-based logistics management system for butchers

As well as his role as minister for industry, Christian Estrosi is also the mayor of Nice and was the driving force behind the move to appoint Nice as France’s ‘NFC City’.

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