Eight out of ten testers of the Hungarian mobile wallet pilot project have found the service “very useful” prompting the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association — an alliance between mobile network operators Magyar Telekom, Vodafone and Telenor with MasterCard, OTP Bank and SuperShop — to declare the MobilTarca wallet ready for market... More
SmarTone has become the latest Hong Kong carrier to participate in Hang Seng Bank’s NFC mobile payments service... More
NXP Semiconductors has developed a new version of its PN544 NFC controller chip for Intel and MasterCard... More
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Bank is expanding its NFC payments service to customers of mobile network operator CSL... More
Canadian carrier Rogers is to make an open NFC mobile wallet available to its customers “in the coming weeks.” The new Suretap Wallet, which is separate from the Suretap payments service launched last November in partnership with CIBC, will allow Rogers to work “cooperatively with all banks to ensure numerous cards from many different banks are available in the Suretap Wallet.”... More
Canadian banks President’s Choice Financial and TD Bank Group are to launch Ugo, an open NFC mobile wallet, in 2014... More
Ukraine-based PrivatBank has developed an ATM that uses NFC to “significantly reduce” product costs by eliminating the need to include a pin pad, screen and other user interface features. More
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has included Oberthur Technologies’ Pearl embedded secure element in its Mi3 handset — a device which sold 100,000 units in under 90 seconds when it became available earlier this month... More
Mobile network operator NTT Docomo, founder of Japan’s Osaifu-Keitai mobile payments service, is to take its mobile payments service global from 5 February 2014, in conjunction with MasterCard. More
Contactless technology specialist On Track Innovations (OTI) has received MasterCard Mobile PayPass certification for Wave Dongle, an add-on that plugs into the audio jack of a standard mobile device to provide users with NFC payments capabilities... More
Commonwealth Bank of Australia has announced a series of upgrades to its mobile banking and payments service, including plans to offer NFC payments using secure elements embedded in “certain phones” and NFC stickers that can be used to make payments by customers with a standard mobile phone... More
Australian supermarket chain Coles is testing a contactless payment sticker that attaches to a customer’s mobile phone... More
Poland’s Eurobank has begun offering its customers the ability to pay with NFC using T-Mobile’s MyWallet service... More
Bank of China (Hong Kong) is to introduce a microSD card based NFC payments service before the end of the year... More
Finnish telco DNA has launched Täpäkkä Credit, a service that allows its customers to use NFC stickers to make payments at MasterCard PayPass contactless terminals... More
Russian mobile network operator MTS has teamed with MasterCard to launch a co-branded smartphone that can make NFC payments at MasterCard PayPass contactless terminals... More
Orange Business Services has launched the NFC Service Center, a dual TSM solution designed to enable banks and service providers to deploy a wide range of NFC services to customers of all the French mobile network operators... More
A group of financial, technology and telecoms companies have formed Mobile Wallet Initiative Austria, a new organisation that aims to create an open nationwide standard for NFC mobile wallets... More
Both Vodafone and Orange are to launch NFC payments services using prepaid cash accounts in Spain this year... More
Giesecke & Devrient’s SkySIM CX, an NFC SIM card that allows several NFC applications to be executed at the same time, has received EMVCo, American Express, MasterCard and Visa approval, confirming it meets their requirements for use in secure payments systems... More