Gemalto has announced that it has deployed its Secure Access Modules (SAM) into existing EasyCard payment terminals in Taiwan with eSECURE Technology. The SAM card is used to upgrade existing payment terminals for contactless use. Upgraded contactless-ready terminals give consumers a simple, fast and secure means to make small sum payments. There are currently around 16 million EasyCards in the market. READ MORE

ViVOtech has announced that its NFC mobile payment wallet, Over-the-Air (OTA) provisioning, smart posters, coupon delivery and redemption technologies have been successfully deployed in Citi Tap and Pay, a pilot service that brings to India next-generation contactless credit card payments based on this emerging technology. Launched in July in the city of Bengaluru in India, Citi Tap and Pay is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive NFC mobile payment pilots.a READ MORE

DeviceFidelity has announced the availability of In2Pay, a microSD-based solution that "transforms any mobile phone with an available memory card slot into an interactive contactless transaction device. Compatible with near field communication (NFC) technology, In2Pay is now available for trials with banks, wireless carriers and payment networks, with volume production for commercial deployments in 2010. DeviceFidelity has signed evaluation agreements with some of the largest card issuers in the U.S. and will be demonstrating In2Pay at Cartes 2009." READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless has announced that it is providing critical infrastructure components to Taggo, a membership card aggregator and storefront, for the new service Taggo will launch in Singapore and other parts of South East Asia early next year. Using ID stickers based on INSIDE's PicoPass(r) 2KS contactless memory chip, contactless readers based on INSIDE's M210-2G proximity coupler and INSIDE's integration and adoption services, Taggo has developed a way for mobile phone stickers to replace plastic loyalty and membership cards from a variety of retail merchants. READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless and TWINLINX are working together on the integration of INSIDE's secure components in the TWINLINX MyMax NFC sticker and working to gain type approval of the sticker from the major bank card brands. TWINLINX is in discussions with major wireless carriers and transport operators in the U.S. and Europe and says it has already established agreements with a number of them. READ MORE

Oberthur Technologies has announced Smart Lumiere, a light-emitting contactless card that emits light when it is entered in the field of a contactless reader to inform the cardholder when a transaction is taking place. READ MORE

MasterCard Worldwide, Credicard, Citibank’s credit card administrator for the Brazilian market, and Redecard have announced the launch of MasterCard PayPass contactless payment technology in Rio de Janeiro for public transportation and other quick service merchants. MasterCard says that PayPass is the first contactless payment product to be introduced for public transportation in Latin America. READ MORE

Zenius Solutions has announced the integration of its software to an NFC add-on for GSM phones - offering the ability to enable interactive NFC capability on current mobile phones. NFC payment capability is achieved by adding a BLADOX Waver product running ZeniusMobilePay software to supported GSM phones, enabling secure Mastercard PayPass, Visa payWave, American Express ExpressPay and Discover Network Zip EMV and non-EMV Contactless transactions. READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless has introduced the MicroPass 6000 dual-interface intelligent payment processor, designed as an EMV-compliant platform providing both contact and contactless operation. READ MORE

The NFC Forum has made available a presentation given at the CTIA conference earlier this month titled "Making Money with NFC" that was presented by Debbie Arnold (NFC Forum), Dave Wentker (Visa, Inc.), Matt Ronning (SONY), David de Kozan (Cubic), and Mohammad Khan (ViVOtech). If you're interested in a good background on the current state of NFC-based mobile payments and other applications, this presentation provides a great overview.

INSIDE Contactless has announced a partnership with ADELYA, a Software-as-a-Service company specializing in contactless and mobile loyalty and relationship programs, to enable consumers to conduct retail loyalty, ticketing, low-end ID and other transactions using the mobile phones they already have. INSIDE Contactless is providing ADELYA with PicoPass contactless stickers to transform mobile phones into contactless loyalty cards. More than 300,000 loyalty cards embedded with contactless stickers have already been deployed throughout France to customers of a children's clothing retailer. READ MORE

The Smart Card Alliance has released a new white paper titled "Fraud in the U.S. Payments Industry: Fraud Mitigation and Prevention Measures in Use and Chip Card Technology Impact on Fraud" developed by its Contactless and Mobile Payments Council.

"Criminals are known to exploit the weakest link in a payments infrastructure. With issuers in the rest of the world moving to EMV, it is likely that criminals are going to move counterfeit card activities to the U.S., attacking both U.S. and international issuers," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "If the United States wants to avoid an incoming tide of higher loss, the industry must be willing and able to make investments in emerging technologies." READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless has announced an initiative that it says "creates a new class of mobile payment solutions that banks, brands, transit agencies and others can deploy quickly, easily and in a highly targeted way starting in 2010. INSIDE has already engaged with several innovative technology companies that share its vision to develop a variety of mobile payment solutions based on INSIDE's proven, certified MicroPass(r) platform that will enable existing mobile phones to support mobile payments, as well as transit, ID and access control applications. A number of these solutions expected to reach the market as early as this fall." READ MORE

In an article on PaymentsViews.com titled "Blinging it Home? A Look at Bling Nation", Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at Bling Nation, a provider of a community payments service based on contactless technology and relationships with community financial institutions.

Over the last several weeks, Carol has been conducting a series of very interesting interviews with companies in the mobile payments space. Be sure to check them out!

In the UK, Barclays has posted a video demonstrating the use of its contactless cards at point of sale. Barclays says it's "the first bank to issue contactless debit cards as standard to the majority of current account customers."

MasterCard Worldwide has announced that independent gasoline-convenience store retailer Hess will accept MasterCard PayPass at more than 870 company-operated Hess and Hess Express locations along the eastern United States. In addition to traditional magnetic-stripe payment cards, Hess will accept MasterCard PayPass at check-out counters at these locations by early 2010. READ MORE

In an article in DMNews, Dianna Dilworth reports on JCPenney's pilot program for mobile coupons in the Houston area. Using the coupons presented on their mobile phones, consumers earn discounts on purchases. For its program, JCPenney is using San Jose-based Cellfire to manage the mobile coupon efforts. Cellfire claims they are seeing redemption rates of 10% to 20% for mobile coupons - resulting from much better targeting of offers as compared to traditional paper coupons.

Dilworth also reports that Starbucks is using 2D bar code as well with its new Starbucks Card Mobile iPhone application now in pilot. She says that Starbucks is using technology from Codilink to read the 2D bar codes generated by the application on the iPhone.

Tyfone has announced the it was awarded a second patent - US 7,581,678, is entitled “Electronic Transaction Card - for its innovations in smart card-based electronic wallet technology.

According to Tyfone, "using time-varying magnetic fields, Tyfone’s patented technology enables the use of a memory card as an electronic wallet and/or the ability to use that memory card for the secure transmission of financial information." READ MORE

The Smart Card Alliance has published a new position paper titled “End-to-End Encryption and Chip Cards in the U.S. Payments Industry" that "proposes an alternative to end-to-end encryption, protecting cardholder data by using chip card technology, but in a different way than has been considered in the past."

Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, said "In our paper we discuss a different approach optimized for the U.S. payment market: using contactless chip cards, including a dynamic cryptogram with each transaction and authorizing transactions online. This stands in sharp contrast to previous considerations of implementing 'chip and PIN' based on the full EMV standard. Instead, this proposal builds on what is already happening in the U.S. -- the issuance and merchant acceptance of contactless cards -- while keeping in step with globally interoperable EMV standards." READ MORE

Aneace Haddad sends word this morning of his new venture Taggo - with the tagline "Go cardless, go Taggo!" For more, see his blog post "Taggo’s first VAR partnerships are about to bring new NFC capabilities to retailers across the Asia-Pacific region".

The Smart Card Alliance's Contactless and Mobile Payments Council has published a new research paper titled "Issuer and Merchant Best Practices: Promoting Contactless Payments Usage and Acceptance" that identifies issuer and merchant best practices for driving consumer use of contactless payments. READ MORE

In an article titled "Getting the Garden Ready: First Data and Mobile Payments at the Point of Sale" over on our sister Payments Views blog, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at mobile payments for local point-of-sale transactions and, in particular, First Data's efforts in that regard.

In preparing the article, Carol interviewed Barry McCarthy, President, Mobile Commerce Solutions for First Data, who discussed the four key pieces required for mobile payments at POS: the upgrade of the POS terminal base, availability of NFC-enabled phones, card issuer participation, and consumer education.

A new report from Juniper Research "forecasts that the application of NFC as a mobile retail marketing tool via coupons and smart posters will support the growth of NFC mobile payment transaction values from $8bn in 2009 to $30bn within three years." READ MORE

ReadWriteWeb takes a look at London's Oyster card, the RFID smart card used for electronic ticketing on London's public transport services.

The NFC Forum and the Mobey Forum have announced a Memorandum of Understanding to "work together to further ongoing efforts to create open standards that enable the delivery of services that provide secure and interoperable mobile financial transactions." READ MORE

MasterCard has announced that Tim Hortons, one of North America's largest quick service restaurant chains, is now accepting MasterCard PayPass at more than 400 U.S. locations. Tim Hortons first began accepting MasterCard PayPass in many of its 3,000 stores in Canada in 2007. READ MORE

Action to prevent criminals abusing new mobile phone technology, which allows them to be used like debit, credit and pre-pay cards, has been agreed by the UK government, mobile phone and card payments industries, Home Office Minister Alan Campbell announced today. READ MORE

MasterCard has announced that Texas-based quick service restaurant chain, Whataburger, will accept MasterCard(R) PayPass contactless payments at more than 500 locations across southern United States. Customers will be able to use their MasterCard PayPass card or device to simply Tap & Go to pay for menu items at the counter and at the drive-thru, enabling them to make purchases quickly and conveniently. READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless and Cryptography Research have announced an agreement regarding the use of CRI’s patents covering countermeasures to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and related attacks for INSIDE’s MicroPass and other secure semiconductor products. Under the agreement, INSIDE may use CRI's patents as part of the security strategy for its contactless semiconductor products which are used around the world in a variety of form factors – including contactless cards, key fobs, mobile payment bridge products, and NFC secure elements for mobile phones – for use in applications such as contactless payment, loyalty, identification, transit and access control. READ MORE

U.S. Bank has announced that it is "the first card issuer in the United States to add Visa payWave technology to an unembossed debit card that is issued instantly to an account holder upon opening an account. The instant-issue Visa payWave pilot is being tested at select U.S. Bank branches in Denver and Salt Lake City as part of U.S. Bank’s on-going innovation in payments." READ MORE