A social media study conducted by MasterCard and Prime Research has identified a high volume of conversation and consumer interest in adopting mobile payments — as well as highlighting a number of barriers to entry... More
The Market
Samsung and Visa announce NFC payments plan that cuts out the carriers
The handset maker and payments network have announced a plan to pre-load Visa’s payWave applet on embedded secure elements in “selected” next generation Samsung devices — potentially enabling banks to offer NFC payments without any involvement from the mobile network operators. More
Japan, China and Korea to get international NFC roaming
Mobile network operators in the three countries have agreed technical specifications that will enable consumers to make use of NFC payments and other services in both their home country and abroad. More
The new issue of Mobile Wallet Outlook is now out
The January/February issue of the monthly trends bulletin from the NFC World team’s business intelligence service examines the impact on the mobile wallet market of the new Facebook Card, the arrival of NFC in the home and the latest mobile wallet business developments from around the world. More
NFC Forum adds payments, retail, consumer electronics, healthcare and transport groups
“By helping us focus our efforts and expertise on the specific needs of key market sectors, the SIGs will enable the NFC Forum to facilitate and accelerate the delivery of exciting new NFC solutions to consumers,” says Forum chairman Koichi Tagawa. More
Taiwan TSM project gets approval
Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission has given the go-ahead for transportation card issuer EasyCard and the country’s five carriers to form a joint venture company to deliver NFC payments and ticketing services — provided the partners comply with a number of conditions designed to ensure a competitive environment is maintained. More
Visa Europe forecasts breakout year for NFC
“The year ahead will see us putting mobile contactless payments into consumers’ hands and introducing digital wallets on a mass scale,” says Peter Ayliffe, chief executive of Visa Europe, as the payments network predicts there will be 40 mobile contactless payments issuers in Europe in 2013. More
Airline, WiFi and testing groups sign collaboration agreements with the NFC Forum
“These new agreements with Global Certification Forum (GCF), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and the Wi-Fi Alliance will expedite the availability and use of more globally interoperable NFC-enabled solutions,” says Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum. More
Frost & Sullivan: NFC to account for half of Europe’s mobile payments
NFC payments will account for 42.3% of all mobile payments made in Europe in 2015, according to new figures released by Frost & Sullivan... More
The Mobile Wallet Report: PayPal takes its digital wallet overseas, biometrics gain ground and marketers flock to Apple Passbook
In the December edition of Mobile Wallet Outlook, the NFC World team examines the resurgence of interest in using fingerprint verification at the point of sale, the innovative new services being built on top of Apple’s Passbook mobile wallet and the latest consumer adoption surveys. Our first “spot report” takes an in-depth look at PayPal’s digital wallet and in-store payments strategy and asks whether the online payments giant can succeed in crossing the online-offline divide. More
Proxama opens US office
UK-based NFC specialist Proxama is expanding overseas with the opening of an office in the US... More
Auchan picks mobile barcodes for France’s MCX
“Our goal is to create the m-payment standard within the retail sector, independent of any telephone operators and banks,” says the head of Flash’n Pay, a new mobile wallet brand that has been created by one of the country’s largest grocery retailers and is set to go head to head with the French carriers’ NFC-based Cityzi service. More
iPhone 5S with NFC “likely”
Apple is likely to launch an “iPhone 5S” in June or July 2013, Peter Misek of investment bank Jefferies has predicted in a new research note... More
Juniper scales back NFC forecast
Global NFC retail transaction values will now reach US$110bn in 2017, significantly below the $180bn previously forecast, the analysts say, due to the lack of NFC in the iPhone 5, lower than expected adoption of Google Wallet and the delay in the launch of Isis. More
Dutch prefer app payments
55% of Dutch consumers would prefer to make mobile payments through an app rather than NFC, according to a poll of 15-65 year olds conducted by Telecompaper... More
NFC Forum adds 22 new members
New companies joining the NFC standards body include Acer, Bell Mobility, China UnionPay and Lenovo. Qualcomm has upgraded to sponsor level and Kovio to principal level membership. More
Call for contributions: New report on mobile payments and the future of merchant transaction fees
The NFC World team has identified ten pressure points that suggest the arrival of mobile payments will result in a fundamental change in the overall cost of processing payments and the way in which merchants transaction fees are calculated — and we’d like to hear from anyone who is working on ways to use mobile technology to cut the cost of processing transactions at the point of sale. More
ABI raises NFC handset forecast
ABI Research has raised its estimate for NFC handsets shipped in 2012 from 80m to 102m units... More
Authentec sells Embedded Security Solutions division to Inside Secure
The sale suggests that Apple’s interest in acquiring Authentec lies with the company’s innovative combined fingerprint and NFC solution, which is not part of the division being acquired by Inside Secure, and will lead to renewed speculation that Apple will include NFC in future iPhones and other devices. More
Mobile Wallet Outlook: Merchants and new financial services players flex their mobile payments muscles
In the November edition of Mobile Wallet Outlook, the monthly trends bulletin for subscribers to The Mobile Wallet Report, the NFC World team examines the role US merchants plan to play in mobile payments and how the move to mobile is creating new opportunities for alternative players to define the bank account of the future. More