“In some parts of the developed world, NFC can sometimes be a solution looking for a problem but we’ve got plenty of problems here in Africa and it is an ideal solution for quite a few of them,” says mobile money expert Susie Lonie. More
London’s Oval Cricket Ground is to test a mobile ordering and payment solution that lets fans use their mobile phone to place an order and complete payment without having to leave their seat... More
US pharmacy chain Walgreens is piloting a shopper marketing platform that uses Google’s Project Tango 3D augmented reality technology to let shoppers locate a particular product, get directions to the correct aisle and earn rewards as they shop... More
Moto X phone owners can now protect access to their mobile using a ‘digital tattoo’ developed by VivaLnk that can be positioned on the wrist and stays in place for five days... More
Samsung is providing Galaxy NFC device owners with a range of exclusive rewards and incentives via a new service that offers access to VIP lounges and suites, seat upgrades and vouchers for concessions and merchandise at 41 AEG venues across the US... More
Google’s Chromecast media streamer, which enables users to send shows, movies, music and more to large screens, is to use a new ultrasonic connectivity technology to enable mobile devices to be paired with a Chromecast-equipped television, GigaOm reports... More
New support for Android Beam, the name used for NFC peer-to-peer sharing in Android, is to be introduced with Android L, version 5.0 of Google’s operating system... More
The next generation of Android, unveiled at the Google I/O developer conference, will offer mobile payments, banking and commerce providers a wide range of new functions... More
Developers attending Google’s I/O conference have been given a DIY virtual reality headset that includes an NFC tag for connecting the device to their mobile phone. More
SimplyTapp, the US startup that worked with Google to add support for host card emulation (HCE) to Android, is now offering a self-service platform for card issuers and other mobile app developers looking to pilot HCE solutions... More
US mobile payments service LevelUp is to provide its merchants with the ability to push offers to shoppers via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons built into the next version of its POS device... More
Identify theft protection provider LifeLock has withdrawn LifeLock Wallet, a service built on Lemon Wallet which it acquired for US$50m in December 2013... More
Restaurant booking service OpenTable has introduced a Google Glass version of its app... More
Google Play users in 12 countries can now charge the cost of their purchases to their PayPal account... More
Google Glass wearers will soon be able to make payments from their Google Wallet account, by simply saying “send money”, Techcrunch reports... More
“Host card emulation is good for the NFC ecosystem as a whole, but remains immature, unstandardised and, relative to secure element based deployments, vulnerable to malicious attack,” says SIM card manufacturer association SIMalliance, which has published an HCE discussion paper called Secure Element Deployment & Host Card Emulation... More
The arrival of host card emulation (HCE) has led to a re-think of online payments giant PayPal’s famously anti-NFC point of view, company president David Marcus has revealed... More
The WiFi Alliance has updated its WiFi Protected Setup certification program to include tap-to-connect functionality via NFC... More
HTC‘s newest flagship smartphone, the HTC One (M8), has been announced and is available as a Google Play Edition running stock Android 4.4 KitKat, or from carriers worldwide with the handset maker’s own HTC Sense 6 skin running over Android... More
From 14 April 2014 it will only be possible to use Google Wallet to make an NFC payment using a device that supports host card emulation (HCE)... More