Since its announced launch less than a year ago, more than 50 institutions have adopted the Blackboard and Sony Electronics contactless FeliCa-powered platform that was developed specifically for U.S. higher education institutions. Students at these 50 schools use contactless ID cards to get into secure buildings and facilities, pay for books, meals and laundry and […]

Leaked specs of two brand-new BlackBerry handsets shows RIM is serious about NFC. According to Top10.com, both the Monaco Touch and Sedona handsets will be NFC-equipped when they hit stores in late summer 2011. In addition to NFC, the Monaco Touch will feature a 3.7 in touch screen, 4GB of internal memory, a five megapixel […]

GAO Embedded has announced the release of a new UHF development kit designed for contactless financial transactions and encrypted authentication. The development kit, model 726001, contains an M9 CF (Compact Flash) module, a common blade interface board, a UHF external antenna, a sample tag kit, demo software and software libraries. The kit also offers RS-232 […]

Visa has signed a deal with UK-based mobile money solutions provider Monitise to roll out mobile contactless payments across Europe, according to nma.co.uk. The deal, which builds on Visa’s €500 million investment in mobile banking technology, will see the partners develop and deploy large-scale mobile services, including payment, peer-to-peer money transfers and text alerts for […]

Vix Technology France is supplying the French cities of Brest, Lorient and Quimper with three different fare collection systems, all based on a single regional interoperable “KORRIGO” card. Brest has chosen a mixed system composed of magnetic tickets and KORRIGO contactless cards. These media will be validated on Vix’s V6000 validators installed in city’s 165 […]

INSIDE Secure has announced the availability of biometric on-card matching capabilities for its SecuRead system-in-package NFC solution. Based on advanced fingerprint identification software from Neurotechnology running on the SecuRead secure element, the new solution enables manufacturers of mobile NFC devices to provide two-factor security for a variety of mobile applications, including payment. The solution will […]

Instead of a paper check in their mailboxes, students at Santa Fe College, Gainesville, Fla. are receiving anothert option of having their financial aid checks deposited directly into their accounts. Ginger Gibson, the college’s vice president of finance, said the switch to the Higher One-backed service has been nearly a decade in the making, spurred […]

O2 UK has announced plans to launch a contactless mobile payment service in the UK later this year, according to Total Telecom. O2’s managing director of financial services James Le Brocq told Total Telecom, “We want to take the entire contents of your wallet and put it on the mobile,” adding that the service will […]

New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is ready to start building its contactless fare payment system after nearly four years of testing, according to Digital Transactions News. MTA officials say they are finalizing a broad outline of the system and will soon receive formal proposals from vendors to begin work on a detailed design, […]

Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry smart phones, has announced plans to launch NFC payments in the UK in time for the 2012 Olympics, according to MarketingWeek. Last week T-mobile and Orange announced their joint venture Everything Everywhere will be the first UK operator to offer NFC payments this year, with O2, Nokia, Android […]