PARTNER NEWS: Host card emulation (HCE) specialist SimplyTapp has closed a US$6m Series B funding round... More
SimplyTapp raises US$6m to grow HCE
Secure element
Eurosmart forecasts 600m NFC SEs in 2015
A total of 8bn secure elements will be shipped this year, with SIM cards accounting for 5.1bn of the total, according to new statistics released by smart security industry association Eurosmart, with the total rising to 12bn in 2020... More
MasterCard backs Zwipe fingerprint payment card
MasterCard has partnered with Zwipe, maker of a contactless payment card that includes an integrated fingerprint biometric sensor, for the commercial launch of the technology following a pilot with Norway’s Sparebanken DIN. More
New Zealand banks and carriers to begin Semble NFC wallet rollout in November
TSM NZ, the NFC payments joint venture between New Zealand’s carriers and the Paymark payments network, has announced a new brand name, a November date for its first trials — and a marketing partnership with Samsung... More
NFC technology report available for free download
NFC Technologies and Systems, a 98-page report that explains in detail the technology behind NFC tag reading and writing, the role and functionality of trusted service managers (TSMs), how secure elements work and how they keep sensitive data secure is now available as a free download in the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre... More
SD Association adds support for TransferJet communications
Memory card standards group the SD Association has expanded its iSDIO specification to include support for TransferJet, a short range contactless communications technology that enables data to be transferred between devices at high speed... More
Apple joins NFC secure element standards body
Apple has joined GlobalPlatform, the organisation responsible for defining standards for the secure elements used to store sensitive data in NFC phones... More
Apple confirms NFC chip lockdown
Access to the NFC chip in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will be available only to Apple Pay, an Apple spokeswoman has told Cult of Mac... More
No support for carriers’ NFC SIMs in Apple devices?
Softcard, the US carrier-backed NFC venture formerly known as Isis, won’t have access to the NFC support in the new iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch until 2015, a blog post by CEO Michael Abbott suggests — and, even then, it looks as though it won’t be via a conventional NFC-enabled SIM... More
Transcript: Apple CEO Tim Cook and SVP Eddy Cue introduce Apple Pay mobile payments and NFC
“It’s all about the wallet,” Apple CEO Tim Cook explained during the unveiling of Apple Pay mobile payments and the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch with NFC on 9 September... More
iPhone 6 to ship with NFC and support for Apple Pay mobile payments
UPDATED The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will include support for NFC, Apple has announced. The NFC functionality will let users make Apple Pay mobile payments in stores. More
23 Apple patents related to NFC and mobile payments
Apple has been steadily building a portfolio of patents related to NFC and mobile payments over recent years, from as far back as 2009. NFC World+ has reported on these as they have been published and links are provided here to details of 23 patents covering technical innovations and use cases in payments, mobile marketing, coupon delivery, gifting, event ticketing, content sharing, travel and beyond. More
SIMalliance publishes NFC paper
The SIMalliance has set out its recommendations for UICC configuration and feature requirements for NFC payments in a new paper called UICC Configuration for Mobile NFC Payments v1.0... More
Analysts report on Apple/Visa partnership
“We think a partnership between Apple and Visa would make strategic sense and believe an announcement could happen as early as this fall,” a team of Pacific Crest Securities analysts has concluded in a new report that follows reports suggesting that two are in talks on mobile payments... More
NXP CEO: NFC secure elements will continue to see strong demand
“We feel very comfortable with the strength of the secure element,” NXP Semiconductors CEO Rick Clemmer has told analysts during the chip maker’s second quarter earnings call... More
Amazon Fire phone packs NXP chip
The NFC chip in Amazon’s new Fire phone is NXP’s 47803, an NFC controller and embedded secure element package based on the chipmaker’s PN547 controller, a teardown by iFixit of the online retail giant’s first smartphone has revealed... More
Visa to launch new payments service in September, Apple could be the first customer
Visa has unveiled a suite of services designed to “facilitate secure payments across a broad range of internet-connected devices and wearables”... More
Consult Hyperion demos EMV mobile payments over BLE on an iPhone
UK payments technology specialist Consult Hyperion has unveiled a proof-of-concept solution that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and host card emulation (HCE) to enable both iPhone and Android NFC phone owners to make MasterCard, Visa and other open loop EMV payments at the point of sale... More
BBVA launches NFC payments based on Visa HCE specifications
BBVA has become the first bank to launch a commercial NFC payments service that makes use of Visa’s cloud-based payments specifications... More
GSMA supports HCE guide
A guide to host card emulation (HCE) and SIM-based NFC payments options has been produced by Consult Hyperion, in conjunction with GSMA... More