Japanese carrier Softbank has announced new NFC stickers for the iPhone 4 that enables customers to conduct contactless mobile payments at the point of sale, according to macrumors.com The sticker, which covers the entire back of the phone, is made of polyurethane, weighs half an ounce and costs $36. The device does not actually interact […]

Frost & Sullivan has released a new report predicting substantial growth for the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region’s smart card market over the three years, according to squidcard.com. Frost & Sullivan says MENA’s smart card revenue will reach $328.5 million in 2014, up from $229.3 million in 2009. This constitutes a compound annual growth […]

Citibank Korea has partnered with KT, Korea’s 2nd largest wireless services provider, to launch its new Citi Mobile Card, enabling Citi credit cards to be downloaded wirelessly to a mobile phone’s USIM chip. The new solution allows KT customers to tap their mobile phone on a contactless reader at the point of sale to pay […]

Alcatel-Lucent has launched a contactless payment and loyalty points program with Sanoma Magazines to help the Belgium-based publisher gain insight into the buying habits of its non-subscription customers, according to destinationcrm.com. In the pilot, customers use prepaid NFC stickers affixed to their mobile phones to buy Sanoma’s ‘HUMO’ and ‘Flair’ magazines by holding the mobile […]

California-based market research group iSuppli predicts “explosive” growth for NFC technology over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal. iSuppli says that this year’s worldwide shipment of 52.6 million NFC-equipped phones will quadruple to 220.1 million units in 2014. This means that 13.1% of all phones shipped in 2014 will feature NFC, […]

California-based Tempo Payments is planning to pilot mobile contactless payments tied to “decoupled” debit cards, according to paymentssource.com. The pilot will involve tagging consumers’ phones with NFC stickers to conduct contactless mobile payments at the point of sale. Mike Grossman, Tempo’s CEO, says the company plans to eventually move the pilot to microSD based NFC […]

HTC CEO Peter Chou says that the Taiwan-based company will introduce NFC into its LTE smart phones and tablets late next year, according to androidcentral.com. Similar to the recently announced Google Nexus S, HTC’s new phones will feature integrated NFC chips for contactless mobile payments, identification and more. In a conference with GSMA, Chou commented […]

Turkey’s Bank Asya is partnering with smart card technology solutions provider Watchdata to launch a microSD-based mobile payment solution in Turkey. The solution, called DIT Mobil, enables customers to conduct transactions at the point of sale by simply tapping their mobile phone against a MasterCard PayPass compatible reader. The new solution is the latest member […]

France Telecom’s Orange has announced a large-scale commercial deployment of NFC-enabled SIM cards and handsets to facilitate the development of mobile contactless services in Europe. The new SIM cards will be introduced to Orange subscribers in the second half of 2011, and the operator says it will try to equip at least 500,000 of its […]

i-Free, a provider of mobile content services in Russia and the CIS, has won an mBusiness & Commerce prize at World Summit Award Mobile (WSA Mobile) 2010 for its “Mobile Vending” project. WSA Mobile is an international mobile industry competition for the most promising mobile projects from over 100 countries around the world. i-Free’s Mobile […]