Canada's Interac Association has announced a partnership with INSIDE Contactless, the world leader in open-standard contactless chip technologies to develop chips containing the specifications for INTERAC’s contactless payment service. According to the companies, this partnership will enable Interac Association and its members to offer their debit card users a “next generation” retail payments solution. READ MORE

Mobile payments provider Bling Nation has announced receiving $8 million in Series A funding with $6.3 million coming from lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. The remaining $1.7 million was raised primarily from Meck, Ltd., which invested an initial $5.3 million in Bling Nation, and CampVentures. READ MORE

Bling Nation has announced that "La Junta, Colo.-based The State Bank went live on May 21 with the Bling Nation Community Payments Service, a contactless payments network that enables banks and merchants to avoid global network costs and keep money within the community through a secure local debit network. The bank markets the local payments network as an alternative to expensive, traditional payments networks and accompanying rewards program as Redi Pay Bling." READ MORE

AcCells, a developer of contactless technology for the mobile phone industry and mChek, a provider of mobile payments in India and Sri Lanka, have announced what they're calling "a patent-pending breakthrough for Contactless Payments." According to the two companies, by "combining service initiation by AcCells mID and transaction authorization with the mChek SIM Toolkit, the solution presents a new level of user experience, transaction cost and efficiency. Most importantly the solution works with ALL existing mobile phones, does not require ANY change to infrastructure and platforms of Mobile Network Operators and/or Banking Infrastructure, and works in MNO-led or Bank-led environments." READ MORE

In an article titled "Testing the limits of new banking technology", ContactlessNews reports on recent trials by US Bank of NFC-equipped mobile phones, contactless stickers, smartphone-based mobile banking and small contactless payment keyfobs.

INSIDE Contactless has introduced the MicroPass 4006 that combines ID and physical access control applications with Visa payWave, Visa’s contactless payment technology. The MicroPass 4006 is designed for next-generation, converged contactless applications on university and corporate campuses, where students, staff and employees can use a single, all-purpose card for branded payment, identification (including biometrics), ticketing and access control transactions. READ MORE

U.S. Bank has announced that it is "the first card issuer in the United States to pilot an innovative new product that allows cardholders to use a single card for traditional magnetic stripe purchases, Visa payWave transactions and to gain access to secure facilities. U.S. Bank is currently piloting the program with employees in Minneapolis. Those involved in the pilot can make purchases and enter their secure work location using a U.S. Bank AccelaPay Visa Card, a prepaid payroll account. The cards contain the MicroPass 4006 platform consisting of two applications: the Visa payWave application, which allows for contactless payment at the point of sale, and the HID iCLASS application, which allows for contactless access to secure facilities at U.S. Bank." READ MORE

Wright Express has announced that its multi-city NFC mobile payment pilot with Sheetz and ViVOtech has been successfully completed. According to the company, "during the trial, drivers used their Sheetz Fleet Business Advantage card loaded into their specially enabled Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phones to make fuel and convenience store purchases at hundreds of Sheetz locations by just waving their NFC mobile phones at contactless-enabled readers. Wright Express was able to authorize and process the mobile transactions as easily as those done by drivers using plastic cards." READ MORE

Oberthur Technologies has announced that it has deployed its FlyBuy contactless stickers to three banks internationally, including one of the largest card issuers in the United States. The sticker is the latest evolution in Oberthur Technologies' work into the development of contactless payment and form factors. READ MORE

NXP and Giesecke & Devrient have announced the introduction of NXP’s new Fast Pay contactless security chip and a new line of G&D contactless payment devices based on this IC. According to the two companies, "Fast Pay-based devices have been specifically designed to provide consumers in the USA and Canada with a convenient and swift contactless payment solution – replacing the need for cash and reducing transaction times." READ MORE

Nokia has announced its third fully integrated Near Field Communication (NFC) device, the Nokia 6216 classic, Nokia's first SIM-based NFC device. According to Nokia, "with NFC consumers will benefit from greater ease of use, more convenient sharing of content - such as images, weblinks, audio files or contact data - as well as secure payment and ticketing transactions, all with just one tap of the device." READ MORE

GlobalPlatform has published a new white paper titled "The GlobalPlatform Proposition for NFC Mobile: Secure Element Management & Messaging" that is intended to outline its technical contribution and commitment to the near field communication (NFC) mobile market. The paper details how GlobalPlatform Specifications are able to support all roles in the NFC ecosystem and outlines the roles and responsibilities of each player in the maintenance of an end-to-end security chain to ensure the secure management of over-the air applications between a service provider’s back office and the secure element on a chip.

MasterCard Worldwide has announced that Circle K is now accepting MasterCard PayPass at select stores across the U.S. "With a simple tap of a MasterCard PayPass card or device at checkout, Circle K customers can now purchase their everyday items more quickly and conveniently." READ MORE

MasterCard Canada, in partnership with Citi Cards Canada and Bell Mobility, has completed the first near-field communications (NFC) trial of Mobile PayPass in Canada. The four month long closed trial allowed participants to use Bell Mobility's wireless network to make purchases using their mobile device at MasterCard PayPass acceptance locations across Canada. READ MORE

Visa has announced the launch of what it is calling "the world’s first commercial Visa mobile payments service for point-of-sale transactions using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. The service marks the first time consumers can purchase an NFC-enabled mobile device off the shelf and use that device to make Visa payWave-enabled transactions at the point-of-sale instead of using their payment card." The new service is being launched first in Malaysia. READ MORE

Maxis Communications Bhd, in collaboration with Nokia, Visa, Maybank and Touch 'n Go, has announced the launch of Maxis FastTap - calling it "an integrated mobile payment service that utilises Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. With the service, customers can use their Nokia 6216 Classic phones to purchase goods and services at more than 1,800 Visa payWave merchant locations as well as pay for toll, transit, parking and theme park charges at over 3,000 Touch 'n Go points nationwide." READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless and First Data have announced signing a three-year agreement to develop contactless payment stickers, which First Data will market as GO-Tag products. According to the companies, INSIDE will supply MicroPass payment sticker prelams exclusively to First Data-qualified card manufacturers for production. READ MORE

Blaze Mobile and MasterCard Worldwide have introduced the Blaze Mobile MasterCard PayPass mobile payment sticker. According to the two companies, "the small mobile payment sticker can be affixed to any mobile device, enabling it to be used for "Tap & Go" purchases at any of the over 141,000 merchant locations accept PayPass. The mobile payment sticker is tied to a prepaid account and is issued by MetaBank." READ MORE

The CTIA's annual conference - CTIA Wireless 2009 - is being held next week (April 1-3) in Las Vegas.

There are no keynote speakers this year out of the payments industry - however, on Friday, April 3, the day is primarily devoted to an NFC/Mobile Payments and Applications Workshop developed by the Smart Card Alliance.

The workshop will be moderated by Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director, Smart Card Alliance, and will feature industry speakers, including: Didier Serra, INSIDE Contactless; Joe Mendoza, Gemalto; Mohammad Khan, ViVOtech; Jeff Fonseca, NXP Semiconductors; and Liam Lannon, Collis.

Cubic Transportation Systems has announced it is providing new capabilities for the Cubic designed Tri-Reader® to enable an all-in-one reader that will process bank cards, prepaid cards and smart card-enabled mobile phones through an exclusive software development and licensing agreement with ViVOtech, a provider of point-of-sale (POS) readers for contactless and Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone payments. READ MORE

The Utah Transit Authority is showcasing its new electronic fare collection system this week at an event held in Salt Lake City by the Smart Card Alliance. According to the UTA, "the new electronic payment system for the transit agency is the first full-system rollout of a transit payment system based on the open payment network." READ MORE

Telstra, National Australia Bank and Visa have reported on initial results from a three-month trial of mobile contactless payments at Melbourne’s Docklands. In the trial, consumers downloaded the NAB Visa credit card software application to their Telstra SIM remotely, and then used their mobile phone to purchase goods and services by waving their phone over a participating merchant’s Visa payWave enabled reader.

According to the companies, "the trial exceeded expectations, with a clear consumer demand emerging for contactless mobile payments and services during the trial, leading the three organisations to continue to explore opportunities in this area in the next few years." READ MORE

ViVOtech has announced that it has closed an $8.6m extension to its Series C round of funding from its existing investors, bringing the total investment in its series C round to more than $40m. Separately, the company also announced that it has been awarded a key NFC-related software patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent number 7,469,151 was awarded on December 23rd 2008 and covers" a broad range of methods, systems and products for over the air (OTA) provisioning of credit, debit, prepaid, loyalty and other payment or non-payment cards into mobile phone devices through wireless networks or the internet." READ MORE

Moversa, a joint venture between NXP and Sony Corporation, has announced it will unveil its latest security chip – the Universal Secure Access Module (U-SAM) – at this year’s Mobile World Congress (16-19 February in Barcelona, Spain). According to the company, "the chip manages contactless smart card applications, regardless of protocols and operating systems, in Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled mobile devices. The potential of the U-SAM will be showcased on the NTT DOCOMO stand (Stand B117, Hall 8) in a demonstration featuring how multiple applications based on different contactless technologies, can be accessed on one mobile handset." READ MORE

In an article titled "Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait", Leslie Berlin writes for the New York Times about why America is not on the verge of mobile payments at POS.

For that to happen, all the players will have to work together to define standards, determine revenue-sharing, expand the network of electronic readers and think through the other parts of what he calls “this 2,000-piece puzzle.”

We're looking for the best sources to answer the following questions re: contactless payments in the US market - your suggestions are welcome!

• Acceptance - How many POS acceptance locations in the US have been upgraded to support contactless? What has been the ramp to get to today? What is the forecast for the next 3 years?
• Transactions - What has been the transaction growth of contactless payments over the last 3 years? What is the forecast for the next 3 years? Is there evidence that contactless cards migrate to being preferred as the "top of wallet" payment card?
• Issuance - How many contactless payment (credit and debit) cards have been issued in the US? What is the forecasted number of contactless payment cards in the market by 2012?

We're aware of the excellent contactless resources already available in the Smart Card Alliance's Contactless and Mobile Payments Council website - are there others? Let us know and we'll share a summary here.

Tyfone has announced it has completed the Beta Testing phase of its u4ia™ Secure Memory Card (SMC) technology for secure contactless mobile payments. Tyfone also announced joint system testing with its manufacturing partner NXP, the co-inventor of NFC technology and leading vendor of NFC chips. READ MORE

Sheetz convenience stores and Wright Express have announced the launch of a multi-city trial of a new technology that enables drivers to make fuel purchases at Sheetz locations using their mobile phones. READ MORE

In the UK, Barclays has announced that its customers will "soon be able to pay their way with the wave of a card as the bank is set to be the first in the UK to roll-out contactless VISA debit cards to its customers. From March, most Barclays debit cards that are issued or reissued will have contactless technology built in as standard. More than three million customers are expected to be using contactless debit cards by the end of the year." READ MORE

The Smart Card Alliance Contactless and Mobile Payments Council has introduced new tools for merchants accepting or thinking about accepting contactless and mobile payments. Merchants can now access a model to calculate return on investment (ROI) for accepting contactless payments, as well as an online discussion forum to interact with and ask industry experts questions and post comments about contactless and mobile payments. READ MORE