France-based Oberthur Technologies announced today it has won a contract to supply trusted service management to French bank Société Générale, for the bank’s eventual roll out of NFC payment.
LG Electronics today announced a new NFC-enabled Android smartphone, the Optimus LTE Tag, targeted at the South Korean market, which will enable users to change the phone’s settings with a tap of the handset on NFC tags.
Google Wallet chief Osama Bedier late Tuesday said the Web giant had restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards to the wallet after implementing a fix.
Three Taiwanese banks are seeking to enable their customers to tap their mobile phones to make purchases with MasterCard PayPass using microSD cards in a full Android NFC phone from HTC, as well as an iPhone attachment with an embedded chip, as part of separate NFC mobile-payment projects.
Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient has announced it has won a contract to serve as trusted service manager for Australia’s Commonwealth Bank for the bank’s contactless-mobile payment rollout.
NXP Semiconductors CEO Rick Clemmer said the chip maker has notched design wins for more than 130 handsets and tablets, giving it an “Intel-like” market share for the number of devices being designed with NFC chips.
France-based NFC chip supplier Inside Secure has relaunched its initial public offering, planning to raise up the €79 million (US$103.4 million), as it seeks to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded NFC market.
Inside Secure today announced it has shipped 20 million NFC chips the past 12 months and said its chips will be used by a leading phone maker on a major mobile platform–as it seeks to build interest in its renewed IPO.
Reports are citing comments from Microsoft vice president and Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore as emphasizing an NFC-based “wallet experience” for the software giant’s planned Windows Phone 8 platform.
Samsung Electronics has confirmed it has an NFC version of its Galaxy Note, though that comes as no surprise to operators in South Korea, which have been selling the tablet-smartphone hybrid with NFC inside for about two months.
While mobile operators in most other countries are still struggling to roll out even scant volumes of NFC phones that can do payment, ticketing and other applications, South Korea’s telcos have already crossed the 5 million-phone mark–including NFC versions of such high-profile devices as the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note.
2012 was going to be the year that the new era of NFC-based mobile commerce had finally arrived–with Google Wallet rolling out widely, mobile operators in the U.S. and Europe making significant inroads with their own mobile wallets and big Asian m-commerce players generally commercializing NFC, as well.
South Korean mobile operator KT Corp. is launching a small rollout of NFC services on Apple’s iPhone 4, using an attachment called iCarte that contains a full NFC chip.
The major Japanese and South Korean mobile operators in separate announcements today revealed details for planned cross-border NFC services–signaling the move by the telcos away from domestic contactless-mobile technology to standard NFC.
SINGAPORE – South Korean mobile operator KT Corp. plans to launch NFC services in mid-October with more than 50,000 Samsung phones and intends to add an NFC smartphone model from LG Electronics in March supporting the Android operating system, KT’s Eun-Seok Kim disclosed today.
