Visa Europe is in discussion with banks in Romania with a view to introducing NFC payments, possibly as soon as this year, Catalin Cretu, the payments network’s country manager for Romania, has told local business newspaper ZF... More
Archive: News in brief
Sunrise to test NFC in Switzerland
Swiss mobile network operator Sunrise is to begin an NFC payments pilot in March 2012, in collaboration with Oberthur Technologies... More
MasterCard drops Apple NFC hint
“I don’t know of a handset manufacturer that isn’t in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready,” Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard‘s head of emerging payments has told Fast Company in an interview... More
MC opens Singapore R&D centre
MasterCard has opened an R&D centre at its Asia regional headquarters in Singapore... More
ZapTap puts NFC on the shelf
Canadian start up ZapTap is using NFC tags instore to give product information to shoppers... More
Premo offers 3D NFC antenna
Inductive component specialist Premo has developed a 3D-coil isotropic magnetic antenna for NFC applications... More
NFC Playbook on the way?
RIM is rumoured to be lining up an NFC-enabled BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for May or June release, according to BGR... More
200m NFC phones in 2012
There will be 200m phones with built-in NFC technology by the end of 2012, according to the new edition of Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions report... More
Visa mobile spend heads for 50%
Over half the spending put through Visa in Europe in 2020 will be via a mobile device, predicts the payments company... More
Xing adds contacts with NFC
German B2B social network Xing has added support for NFC, allowing members to add new contacts to their network by simply tapping together their mobile phones... More
Entrust adds NFC to secure ID
Secure ID technology provider Entrust has added support for NFC and Bluetooth to its IdentityGuard authentication platform, enabling mobile phones to be used as corporate authentication devices... More
Utility meters to get NFC top-ups
Inside Secure and embedded semiconductor maker Freescale have developed a reference design for an NFC-enabled prepaid utility meter that users can top up with their NFC phone... More
US retailers back chip and pin
“The US payments industry should undergo a coordinated migration to chip and PIN transactions which should support a broad range of payment types (contact, contactless, dual interface, debit, credit, stored value, private and ‘white’ label, etc.) and devices (cards, mobile devices, fobs, etc.),” says the Merchant Advisory Group, a retailer trade association whose members include Walgreens, Walmart, Target, Sears, McDonald’s, Best Buy and Home Depot... More
Tizen preview unveiled
The Linux Foundation has published a Tizen SDK preview to give application developers a pre-release look at the new mobile operating system... More
Australasian TSM certified
ABnote’s TSM hubs in Ingleburn, Australia and Christchurch, New Zealand have been certified under MasterCard’s Mobile Partner Program... More
LG readies 3D NFC phone?
LG is preparing an NFC enabled 3D smartphone codenamed ‘CX2’ for launch at the Mobile World Congress next month, reports Pocketnow... More
Paperlinks platform adds NFC
Paperlinks, a service that enables business users to create and manage QR and barcode based campaigns, has included NFC tag reading functionality in its new barcode scanning app for Android devices... More
OTI gets SIM+antenna patent
On Track Innovations (OTI) has been granted a US patent on its SIM+antenna NFC technology... More
OpenWays offers NFC room keys
OpenWays has unveiled a contactless hotel door key solution that works with both NFC and standard mobile phones... More
Brazil moves towards NFC
The first commercial NFC service could go live in Brazil by the end of this year, Mustafa Almansur, the GSMA‘s NFC programme leader for Brazil, told RCR Wireless at an NFC event organised by the carriers’ association in São Paulo last week... More