Hong Kong's Octopus Holdings has admitted to selling its customers' personal information since January 2006 and pocketing HK$44 million (US$5.7 million) from doing so. (ZDNet Asia)
UK-based NFC technology company Innovision announced today its CEO, David Wollen, has left the company, as the acquisition of Innovision by U.S.-based chip maker Broadcom moves forward.
The New York-based transit guru behind the Toronto Transit Commission's controversial move toward “open payment” says he believes the electronic fare system would cost Toronto “a small fraction” of the cost of adopting the province’s Presto smart card. (Toronto Star)
With interest growing in NFC but few NFC phone models yet on the market, such NFC bridge technologies as contactless stickers, microSDs and SIMs with flexible antennas are attracting more and more attention from service providers and telcos.
France-based Gemalto announced it is serving as trusted service manager for what appears to be a small NFC mobile-payment trial in Thailand involving a bank and mobile operator.
South Korea’s No. 1 mobile operator SK Telecom today announced an agreement with Japan’s second and third largest telcos for interoperable NFC payment and loyalty services.
Near Field Communication could help give retailers a new edge in the “wallet-share war” they have been losing for years to banks and their open-loop payment card brands, according to a new report from the giant National Retail Federation.
U.S.-based HID Global, a major supplier of contactless access-control cards, plans to introduce its high-end corporate ID application on NFC phones using chips from Inside Contactless, the companies announced today.
Christian Estrosi, France’s minister of industry, has confirmed government support for three to five more cities to launch NFC services in France next year, following the precommercial NFC launch in Nice this spring.
Three major Dutch banks and three mobile operators have decided to move forward with planning for an NFC mobile-payment launch in the Netherlands, NFC Times has learned.
Visa Europe today predicted the number of Visa-branded contactless cards on issue in the United Kingdom will reach 12 million by the end of the year, about 2 million more than previously projected.
NatWest bank is dropping out of its O2 Money partnership with mobile operator Telefónica O2, leaving the telco looking for a new partner with which to offer prepaid payment cards and, later, NFC services in the competitive UK market, NFC Times has learned.
The rollout of contactless payment in the United Kingdom will soon enter its fourth year, yet the vast majority of cards are still being issued by just one bank, Barclays, and no large retail chain has widely deployed the technology.
While major U.S. banks and mobile operators are not apparently working together on mobile payment, they have attended meetings together convened by U.S. central bank officials, who want the parties to reach common ground on standards, infrastructure and business models.
U.S.-based mobile-payment start-up RFinity is adopting passive-contactless stickers for its payment project in and around a university campus in Idaho, changing an earlier plan to expand its pilot using contactless microSD cards.
A designer of NFC chip technology and maker of NFC tags, Innovision has a relatively low profile in the NFC industry. But that could change in a couple of years if the company’s vision pays off.
The U.S.-based card company Visa Inc. and its separate bank-owned affiliate, Visa Europe, share a brand and intellectual property on contactless payments and NFC.
France-based fabless chip supplier Inside Contactless had an inside track to the NFC market a couple of years ago as the first supplier of NFC chips supporting early versions of the single-wire protocol.
To those who criticize Nokia for the rather bland handsets it has outfitted with NFC and put onto the market, the handset maker responds–with some justification–that it has done more than any other phone maker to advance NFC technology.
Billing itself as one of Turkey’s largest privately held bank by assets, Garanti has been the most aggressive when it comes to rolling out contactless payment in Turkey’s innovative banking market.
Citi has never been sold on contactless-card payment like rival New York-based bank JPMorgan Chase. But Citi has made up for it with its interest in NFC.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute sets standards for the mobile technology used in nearly 4 billion mobile phones worldwide, and each one requires a SIM card.
Since its creation in 2006 from the merger of the two largest smart card makers at the time, Gemalto has billed itself as “the world leader in digital security.”
Co-creator of NFC with Sony and still the dominant supplier of contactless chips for transit cards worldwide, the Netherlands-based chip maker has taken a few hits of late.
The rollout of contactless payment in the United Kingdom will soon enter its fourth year, yet the vast majority of cards are still being issued by just one bank, Barclays, and no large retail chain has widely deployed the technology.
With rumors heating up that makers of Android smartphones will add NFC chips to “several” models due out by the first part of next year, the battles among suppliers of those chips and the software that supports them has been heating up, as well.
France’s much-anticipated NFC demonstration project scheduled to launch Friday in Nice will feature a variety of applications, including bank payment. But the premier service is expected to be transit ticketing.
Polish mobile operator Polkomtel has not yet launched its planned NFC mobile-payment project–set to start in June with 500 users–but it is already talking about expanding it.
France-based Twinlinx said it will begin shipments in May and June of the first small quantities of its NFC-enabled stickers that use a Bluetooth connection to communicate with handsets.
While many doubt that telcos and banks will ever agree on a business model for NFC and complain about the continued lack of phones supporting the technology, two major players in the United Kingdom–Barclaycard and Orange UK–are preparing for a commercial launch.
Singapore-based trusted service manager Cassis International has appointed smart card industry veteran Jean-Philippe Bétoin to take over its European operation as the company seeks to expand in Europe and take on its larger rivals on their home turf.
Although there are no phones yet on the market to support NFC applications on the SIM, France-based smart card maker Gemalto believes the time is right to introduce the first SIM card with a high-end transit-ticketing application onboard, Mifare DESFire.
Taking aim at NXP Semiconductors and its dominant Mifare technology, four smart card industry suppliers have announced plans to introduce what they call an “open standard” for contactless transit-ticketing applications on cards and NFC phones.