Cryptomathic has announced that it has been selected by MasterCard Worldwide to manage the data preparation requirements for the deployment of the MasterCard Mobile Over The Air Provisioning Service that enables MasterCard PayPass applications to be provisioned on to mobile phones. 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 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

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 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

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

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".

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

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

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

In an article titled "Brigham Young University to test new NFC microSD solution", Sarah Clark writes for Near-Field Communications World about RFinity, an Idaho Falls-based startup that has developed technology to use an NFC application embedded in a microSD card that "enables a secure one-time token to be generated each time a transaction takes place and ensures that a user's credit card details never need to be transmitted, even in an encrypted form."

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.

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

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 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

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.

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

Gemalto and INSIDE Contactless have announced availability of a Near-Field Communications (NFC) solution fully complying with the latest ETSI standards. According to the companies,

"the solution also meets the new GSM Association "Pay-Buy-Mobile" mobile handset requirements based on the Single Wire Protocol (SWP). The new Inside MicroRead® NFC chip, combined with the Gemalto latest UpTeq 300 m-NFC SIM card embarking a Common Criteria EAL4+ security certified chip, gives handset makers and mobile operators the first fully compliant, interoperable, full-speed SWP solution - tested at 1.6 Mbps - to support proximity payments, transport and ticketing."

INSIDE Contactless has announced that it is working with Qualcomm to accelerate the growth of the Near Field Communication (NFC) handset market by jumpstarting the product development cycle, speeding time to market and significantly reducing development costs. As part of the collaboration, the two companies will develop two 3G handset reference designs-one each for UMTS and CDMA2000 networks-that combine Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets with INSIDE's MicroRead(r) multi-standard NFC chip. READ MORE

Qualcomm has announced that it has added support for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to certain chipsets in its product portfolio. "Qualcomm is helping accelerate the commercial availability of mobile handsets featuring the short-range technology and is engaged with leading NFC solutions providers to develop reference designs based on the Company's Mobile Station Modem chipsets. NFC technology is well suited for payment, mass transit, ticketing and other similar applications requiring a quick and secure contactless exchange of data between devices that are in close proximity to each other." READ MORE

In an article titled "NFC is more than just payments", Andy Williams writes for NFC News about the other applications of near-field communications - beyond payments. "What makes NFC so attractive is the wide range of applications it can support, whether it’s opening a door, logging into your computer, signing on to the Internet, or using your phone like a PDA stylus, touching points on a map or other display to gather further information or directions."

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.”

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