Google has been field testing its NFC payments service with a large group of users since late May and, from later this summer, anyone with a Nexus S 4G and a Sprint contract will be able to use their phone to make mobile payments at merchants that accept MasterCard PayPass. More
TfL has agreed to relax its transaction speed requirements to allow payments on London’s bus and underground network to be made via NFC phones and contactless cards from next year — and expects faster NFC phones and contactless cards to arrive in the near future. More
Bruce Mansfield, managing director of debit card payments system Eftpos Payments Australia (ePal), has called on payments providers and mobile network operators to form an impartial NFC industry council, ZDNet Australia reports... More
Vodafone is testing NFC technology in New Zealand, the mobile network operator’s local chief executive Russell Stanners has told The New Zealand Herald... More
Spanish soccer giant FC Barcelona has signed an agreement with the R&D arm of mobile network Telefónica that will see the club’s Camp Nou stadium being the first to test a wide range of leading edge mobile communications technologies... More
The Norwegian bank and mobile network operator have contracted Giesecke & Devrient to provide them with a turnkey NFC solution for a mobile payments trial that will involve a dozen merchant locations in Oslo. More
“At this stage, we will not be progressing with microSD as a contactless payment technology platform,” says the Australian banking giant. More
BPCE, France’s second largest banking group and owner of both Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne, is teaming up with Visa to conduct a pilot test of NFC MicroSD cards in the cities of Nice and Strasbourg this autumn... More
The search giant has distributed custom NFC base stations to merchants in Tokyo’s Roppongi district that let shoppers rate and review merchants — and allow Google to serve recommendations on additional locations based on the places consumers say they like. More
Israel’s largest credit card issuer, Isracard, is to run a mobile payments trial using NFC stickers, Globes reports: ... More
“Several thousand” customers will be able to use their NFC phones to make payments at 35,000 contactless acceptance points across Poland. More
The Quick Tap mobile payments service launched by Barclaycard and Orange last month is just the start of the partners’ NFC plans, says the card issuer’s head of digital payments. “We have a long and deep roadmap of people we want to work with.” More
Bank staff have been given contactless stickers or NFC-enabled microSD cards to enable mobile payments using MasterCard PayPass as the card giant puts its Australasian roadmap into operation. More
News in brief from the NFC world and beyond: Twitter and Docomo add ‘touch and follow’ • Doubletwist shares songs with NFC • Airtag offers P2P loyalty • Lifera and Taztag tie up • Lockitron opens doors with NFC • DPT unveils NFC-enabled car park pay machine • SK C&C USA rebrands as CorFire • Bayer puts antennas into decorative films • Mobey Forum expands • and much more… More
Westpac has become the latest of Australia’s big four banks to trial contactless mobile phone payment technology... More
Up to 12,500 staff at Telefónica España will be given the chance to make mobile payments in shops and use NFC to access buildings and parking, the mobile network operator has announced... More
Telefónica O2 Czech Republic, Komerční Banka, Citibank Europe, supermarket chain Globus and Visa Europe are to conduct an NFC payments trial in the Czech Republic from mid-2011... More
Secure identification specialist Multicard is to provide an NFC-based payment system to Rabobank, one of the Netherlands’ largest financial services companies... More
Telecom Italia and ATM, operator of Milan’s public transport network, have announced plans to run a six month NFC ticketing trial from 11 April with a view to introducing a commercial service by the end of 2011... More
Telefónica, la Caixa and Visa’s NFC payments trial in the Spanish resort of Sitges has seen significant increases in both transaction frequencies and purchase values but, the partners say, a mass deployment of NFC services is still three to five years away. More