Host Card Emulation (HCE) is likely to lead to higher demand for SIM-based NFC payments services and new opportunities for mobile network operators, SIMalliance — which initially warned against HCE for security reasons — has now decided... More
DeviceFidelity has introduced a module that can be used by case makers and other accessory providers to add NFC payments and wireless charging functionality to an iOS device... More
Gemalto is among the suppliers selected by China Telecom to supply SIMs to support the rollout of NFC services to its 183 million subscribers... More
Russia’s Sberbank, Europe’s third largest bank with more than 100million customers, has begun piloting NFC payments in Moscow using embedded secure elements... More
TD Canada Trust, the retail banking arm of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, has become the first in Canada to offer an NFC mobile payment solution that is supported by the country’s three major wireless networks: Bell, Rogers and Telus... More
Deutsche Telekom has launched MyWallet, an NFC service that allows customers with any of 18 supported Samsung and Sony Android NFC devices to make payments at MasterCard PayPass merchants... 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
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
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
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
Canadian carrier Rogers Communications has added support for multiple card types to its Suretap wallet service... More
Canadian carrier-owned TSM provider EnStream is to use Bell ID’s Trusted Service Manager platform to provision and manage secure applications on consumers’ NFC devices... More
Lisbon-based contactless ticketing provider Card4B is to offer Famoco’s FX 100 Android NFC tablet to public transportation operators for ticket validation applications on board buses and other services and, later, for topping up travel passes in retail outlets. More
Mobile network operator Claro and one of Brazil’s largest banks, Bradesco, are to commercially launch an NFC mobile payments service in the state of São Paulo during the first half of this year, ahead of a national rollout that will reach a combined customer base of 85 million consumers... More
The NFC Forum has issued a statement outlining its position on host card emulation (HCE)... More
Kenyan carrier Safaricom is to add NFC payment capabilities to its flagship M-Pesa mobile money service, according to Techmoran.”Still undergoing the tendering process, the NFC SIM cards are expected to be rolled out to its subscribers for mobile contactless payments and transactions making Safaricom the first mobile operator in the region to mass deploy SIM-based NFC for contactless transactions,” the report says... More
Russian carrier MTS has selected Novacard, a Russia-based SIM and smart card supplier, as its TSM provider and will launch the new platform at the end of 2014... More
Spanish airline Iberia has partnered with Samsung to enable travellers to store their boarding passes on their NFC phones... More
Alpha Bank and Vodafone have partnered with Visa and First Data to conduct the first NFC payments pilot in Greece... More
Spain’s CaixaBank has chosen Morpho as its trusted service manager (TSM) for the rollout of the largest commercial NFC mobile payment deployment in Europe to date in terms of customer coverage and number of contactless payments... More