UK-based mobile payments, loyalty and rewards startup Yoyo has raised US$5m to expand its service... More
Yoyo raises US$5m for mobile payments at universities
London
Kiroco launches NFC jewellery, scoops award
UK-based Kiroco has won the Best Innovation of The Year award at London’s Wearable Technology Conference and Expo for a range of interactive jewellery that allows a recipient to tap an NFC phone to see text, video and photo messages uploaded by the sender... More
Clear Channel to take NFC advertising global
Clear Channel Outdoor is to equip 75,000 out-of-home advertising sites in 23 countries around the world with its Connect mobile advertising platform, allowing consumers to interact with brands via NFC tags, QR codes and, in Latin America, via SMS... More
Sony Music runs NFC promo
Sony Music is using NFC to promote artist Foxes’ new single ‘Let Go for Tonight’, using NFC-enabled standees placed at the point of sale in coffee shops located around London’s Oxford Street... More
Giraffe restaurants offer NFC treats
London branches of Tesco-owned restaurant chain Giraffe have begun offering customers daily giveaways through NFC table tents as part of an online advent calendar campaign... More
Bloc hotel to get NFC keys
A new hotel at London’s Gatwick airport is to allow visitors to use their NFC phones for room entry... More
Samsung adds NFC tickets and payments to live music events
Music fans attending Galaxy Studio Live, a series of four live gigs sponsored by Samsung UK, are using NFC to store their tickets and make purchases at the venues with a tap of their mobile device... More
Samsung promotes NFC with Robbie Williams taxi cab competition
Samsung has launched a campaign to give Robbie Williams fans the chance to meet the star by simply tapping NFC tags located in black cabs in three UK cities... More
New York City to pilot NFC parking meters
The New York City Department of Transportation is to pilot test PayByPhone‘s mobile payments system, which is already live in San Francisco, Miami, London and Vancouver, in an 18 block area of the Belmont Business Improvement District in the Bronx... More
TfL “not convinced” about NFC
Transport for London (TfL), which is rolling out contactless card acceptance on London’s public transportation network and ran one of the world’s earliest NFC pilots in 2008, is “not convinced” about NFC, says Matthew Hudson, the statutory body’s head of business development for fares and ticketing... More
London pub picks NFC for social media marketing
Customers of The Cavendish Arms pub in Stockwell, London, can tap their NFC phones to tags located around the premises to get special offers. Each tap sends a message to their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, telling them they are at the pub and detailing any events taking place at the venue that night. More
South Downs Way gets NFC sign posts
“There are fascinating landscapes across the National Park where it’s just not appropriate to put up large display panels,” says the trail officer for the 100-mile walking route across the south of England. “By ‘tapping in’ to these small signs smartphone users will be able to discover all sorts of information about the land they’re walking through.” More
London buses now accept contactless payments
Public transportation users in London can now pay their fare with a contactless credit, debit or charge card on any of the city’s 8,500 buses... More
GSMA appoints new head of NFC
Pierre Combelles has been appointed as the GSMA‘s new business lead for NFC, replacing Nav Bains, who left to join Vivotech earlier this year... More
Spanish university to roll out NFC services across entire campus
UCAM, the Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, is to be the first university in the world to implement NFC technology across its entire campus, the university’s Samuel Mendoza, director of multimedia, and Sergio Leon, director of the computing service, have told members of the Higher Education Smart Card Association (HESCA) at a meeting in London this month... More
Visa releases Olympics NFC and contactless usage statistics
“The response has been extremely positive and our priority now is on turning that enthusiasm into commercial mobile payment deployments across Europe,” says Visa’s Mary Carol Harris, adding that “we recognise that the journey is a marathon, not a sprint.” More
Transport for London delays arrival of new ticketing technology
A new ticketing infrastructure designed to support payments via open-loop contactless cards and NFC phones won’t now arrive in time for the Olympics, TfL has revealed. More
Visa and Samsung reveal Olympics NFC payments plans
The payments network and the phone maker will be issuing limited edition Samsung Galaxy S III handsets loaded with a Visa NFC payments app to athletes and other VIPs during the London 2012 Games. More
Samsung Galaxy S III expands NFC P2P capabilities with S Beam for faster file transfers
The newly announced successor to Samsung’s best selling Galaxy S II features NFC as standard and includes a new file transfer service that enables users to easily connect together two devices via NFC and automatically transfer large video and other files via WiFi Direct. More
Galaxy S III coming next week?
The successor to Samsung’s wildly popular Galaxy S II flagship handset looks set to launch at a press event in London on the evening of Thursday 3 May... More