Identive Group has announced it will design and supply more than one million NFC tags over the next six months for a leading mobile handset manufacturer. Designed to help familiarize customers with NFC technology, the tags will enable a variety of applications such as linking to a Web address or URL, dialing a specific phone […]

BNP Paribas and Orange have have announced a partnership to launch mobile banking services in France. Starting this November, BNP Paribas will be able to offer mobile banking through all of its 2,250 branches, enabling customers to manage their accounts and make payments using their mobile phones. To accelerate the service, the partners say they […]

It just got a bit easier for U.S. consumers to get their hands on an NFC-enabled phone. According to Mobiledia.com, yesterday AT&T began selling Google’s flagship NFC handset, the Nexus S. Originally available only through Sprint, the phone runs on Google’s Android 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ OS, giving it access to all sorts of NFC-enabled applications, including […]

Three leading Hungarian telecos, Magyar Telekom, Telenor and Vodafone, have announced they will team up with MasterCard, OTP Bank and SuperShop to establish the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association. According to the partners, the aim of the Association is to “design and articulate as a recommendation the prerequisite technological standards for mobile NFC services and to […]

ABnote has announced that it is supplying the secure technology for ANZ and MasterCard’s mobile payments pilot in New Zealand. The pilot tests MasterCard PayPass-enabled stickers, which are attached to a user’s mobile phone to perform contactless payments at the point of sale. Customers using the new service can make payments up to $80 without […]

California-based Confident Technologies has released a new two-factor authentication platform for mobile phone out-of band authentication. The patent-pending product called Confident Multifactor Authentication offers a smart phone-based secure image-based second factor in the authentication process that is not connected to or stored on the device. When users register with Web sites or online services, the […]

Research In Motion (RIM) is adding some notches to its belt in terms of product capability, reports CIO Blogs. Two of RIM’s products have received the U.S. government’s Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 security certification, which means they’re approved for use within U.S. federal government agencies and organizations. The two products are the BlackBerry […]

SparkBase is launching a free Android and iPhone app that will allow Chicago-area shoppers to store their loyalty cards on their smart phone, according to Fastcompany.com. Dubbed ‘PayCloud,’ the new app enables users to locate participating merchants, sign up for their loyalty programs and redeem rewards using just a smart phone – no plastic required. […]

Nokia’s new C7 and C9 handsets will be equipped with NFC chips, but will not have the technology necessary to support mobile payments, according to Recombu.com. Neither handset will feature an embedded secure element with payment capabilities or support for the Single Wire Protocol (SWP), says Recombu. The SWP is the specification for a single-wire […]

It’s only a matter of time before paying with your mobile phone becomes a reality in the U.S., says James Anderson, MasterCard’s senior vice president of mobile and vice chairman of the NFC Forum. In an interview with BGR, Anderson likened the current NFC payments situation to that of Internet-accessing smart phones in 2001: “Back […]