A total of 490m NFC secure elements will be shipped in 2015, up 40% on the 350m shipped in 2014, smart security industry association Eurosmart reports. A total of 590m units is expected to ship in 2016, up 20% on 2015. More
The Market
Norway’s Valyou NFC wallet to shut down due to lack of user adoption
The Valyou NFC mobile wallet developed by Norwegian mobile network operator Telenor and banking group DNB is to shut down due to a “much lower than expected end user uptake”... More
Mobile biometrics revenue to reach $9bn by 2018
The inclusion of biometrics in mobile devices will generate US$9bn in revenue by 2018, a report by Biometrics Research Group predicts... More
Biometrics for financial services to be worth US$657m by 2019
The market value of biometric identification for financial services applications will increase from US$123m in 2015 to US$657m in 2019, research from TrendForce predicts... More
PayPal set to float on 17 July
Ebay’s board of directors has approved the completion of the separation of eBay and PayPal into two independent publicly traded companies... More
No Apple Pay for Walmart, Best Buy
Owners of Apple’s new NFC-enabled smartwatch and iPhones will not be able to make Apple Pay mobile payments in either Walmart or Best Buy, the Wall Street Journal reports... More
Video demos show how Apple Pay users will make a payment with the iPhone 6
Videos of Apple staff demonstrating how Apple Pay will be used to make payments in stores and for in-app purchases have now been made available, providing further details of how the new mobile payments service will work... More
No support for carriers’ NFC SIMs in Apple devices?
Softcard, the US carrier-backed NFC venture formerly known as Isis, won’t have access to the NFC support in the new iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch until 2015, a blog post by CEO Michael Abbott suggests — and, even then, it looks as though it won’t be via a conventional NFC-enabled SIM... More
Isis to rebrand as Softcard
US NFC mobile payments venture Isis has chosen Softcard as its new name... More
Invitation to contribute to the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre
NFC World+ is introducing a new service in September 2014 that will go beyond the news to provide our readers with in-depth information on the technologies driving the future of commerce. Initial expressions of interest are now invited from readers who would like to share their knowledge and experiences with our 100,000+ monthly visitors. More
British Banking Association reports on UK’s banking ‘revolution’
Mobile and internet banking in the UK is now being used for transactions worth nearly £1bn a day and totalling £6.4bn a week, up from £5.8bn last year, according to an industry-wide report on how mobile technology is changing the banking industry from the British Banking Association and Ernst & Young... More
Juniper predicts 1.5bn mobile wallets in 2018
There will be more than 1.5billion mobile wallets in use around the world by 2018, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, representing one in five handsets and up from one in 10 at the end of 2013... More
Brightwire: Apple signs mobile payments deal with China UnionPay
“Apple is likely to incorporate a near field communication (NFC) payment function in the next generation iPhone and has reached an agreement with China UnionPay on a mobile payment service,” investment newswire Brightwire reports, citing “a source close to the matter”... More
Introducing NFC World+, the new way to keep up to date with the mobile transaction revolution
Starting today, NFC World has a new name and a new mission — to report on the full array of emerging technologies that are transforming how consumers choose what to buy, who to buy from, and how to pay... More
Japanese carriers ship 14m NFC phones
There were 13.92m NFC mobile phones in service in Japan at the end of January 2014, the Mobile NFC Association (MoNA) reports, and a total of 70 models of mobile phone that support NFC services are now available from the country’s three mobile network operators... More
SIMalliance reports 159% growth in NFC SIM shipments
A total of 4.2bn SIMs were shipped in 2013 by members of the SIMalliance, an organisation that represents suppliers responsible for 86% of the global SIM market, 5% down on 2012... More
PayPal takes another look at NFC
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
NFC Forum updates specs with support for pairing at a distance
New versions of nine NFC Forum specifications have been published today, including version 1.3 of the NFC Connection Handover Technical Specification which now provides a way to use an intermediary NFC device to set up a connection between two other NFC devices located at a distance from each other... More
GSMA reports on NFC adoption at MWC, SIM trends and HCE
One in nine attendees at Mobile World Congress (11.8%) made use of the NFC Badge function available at this year’s event, the GSMA has told NFC World, and there was a “significant increase” in the number of people participating in the NFC Experience as a whole this year... More
Apple iWatch to ship with NFC this year?
Apple will enter the wearable devices market “this fall” with an iWatch that includes a secure element, NFC communications capabilities and support for biometrics, according to a new research note by Taiwan-based KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo... More