contactless payment

Smartag, a division of Identive Group, announced that it gained an order from "a leading mobile handset manufacturer" to design and supply more than one million NFC tags within a period of 6 months. The tags will be included in-box with each purchase of an NFC-enabled smart phone. The company didn’t name the smartphone maker.

Gartner predicts that over 140 million people will be into mobile payments services this year while mass market adoption of NFC payments is still at least four years away.

The forecast says that more than 141.1 million people will use mobile payments services in 2011, up 38.2% from 102.1 million people a year ago. Over the past year the volume of mobile payments has grown by 75.9% from US$48.9bn in 2010 to $86.1bn in 2011.

Yet, Gartner notes that the mobile payment market is growing more slowly than expected.

Isis, a joint venture company conjointly owned by AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, announced the new partnership with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express — all four of the major US payments networks.

"Isis' relationships with all four payment networks means that with Isis-enabled phones and payment terminals in place, merchants and consumers will have ubiquity and freedom of choice when it comes to payment network acceptance," says the company.

Oberthur Technologies has partnered with Hungarian largest financial institution OTB Bank for contactless payment city cards in Pécs, 5th largest city in the country.

Oberthur’s contactless citizen card represents an international banking card that can be used not only for payments but also for other transactions across 150 million merchant locations within Maestro network. The prepaid card can easily be loaded via the Internet or with cash in an OTP Bank branch.

MasterCard makes all its cards issued in Australia and New Zealand PayPass enabled starting next year. At present there are already 5.3 million PayPass cards in Australia that can be used at over 35,000 retail locations, including McDonald's, Bunnings and 7Eleven.

VeriFone Systems Inc unveiled its next version of PAYware Mobile Service for global markets. The updated release features VeriFone's sleek mobile payment solution and gateway service and brings international payment standards including NFC and EMV smart card, with PCI-compliant PIN keypad for Chip & PIN transactions, to popular smart phones.

Proxama, a British provider of contactless payments has announced its partnership with Tuxedo Money Solutions, well-known e-money product provider, to launch prepaid contactless payments for mobile phones. 

A provider of contactless transaction chip technologies Inside Contactless announced the completion of its acquisition of Atmel Corporation's Secure Microcontroller Solutions (SMS) business.

Under the acquisition agreement INSIDE paid approximately $32 million in cash after an adjustment based on the working capital of the transferred business at the closing on September 30, 2010, subject to an additional cash consideration of up to $21 million if certain earn-out targets are met in 2010 and 2011.

A provider of mobile money solutions Monitise announced a new partnership with DeviceFidelity to enable mobile phone users to conduct contactless Visa payWave transactions.

Under their partnership the two companies combine Monitise's expertise in mobile financial services and user interface design with DeviceFidelity's In2Pay technology. In2Pay microSD is an innovative new technology that enables mobile users to transform a smart phone with a microSD slot into a mobile payment device.

Secure mobile payment solutions provider DeviceFidelity announced the In2Pay™ iCaisse4 plug and play mobile payment solution. In2Pay iCaisse4 is a specially designed protective case that enables iPhone 4 to be used to make payments at contactless-enabled merchants worldwide. DeviceFidelity's In2Pay solution was developed in association with Visa and is used in trials by banks and wireless carriers in North America, Europe and Asia.

Bank of America has partnered with Visa Inc to launch a trial of mobile payments in the US starting next month. The two companies will test a program under which consumers will use their smartphones to tap over terminals to pay for their purchases.

The pilot will run from September through the end of the year in the New York area. It is the biggest step yet by the two companies toward creating a "digital wallet" with a host of financial capabilities built into the latest, most sophisticated mobile phones.

 MyVoucherCodes, a UK discount code website has announced the results of its poll conducted to learn the reaction of people to the recent decision to trial contactless payment technology on payments under £15 made by the Co-Operative.

First Data Corporation in association with INSIDE Contactless have introduced the new MasterCard PayPass contactless payment tag for mobile phones. The new product is based on INSIDE’s MicroPass payment platform and enables mobile phones with contactless payment capabilities. MasterCard PayPass mobile payment tag will be marketed and sold to MasterCard licensed financial institutions and card issuers.

Interac Association has successfully performed a series of contactless debit transactions using Scotiabank debit cards and TD Merchant Services’ point-of-sale terminals. With the new dual interface chips added to Interac® Direct Payment, called Interac Flash, holders of Interac branded debit cards can carry out a point-of-sale debit transaction using the contact or contactless feature of the card.

A Visa-enabled iPhone was unveiled by DeviceFidelity this week. DeviceFidelity has partnered with Visa for combining Visa payWave, and In2Pay technology to transform a mobile phone with a microSD memory slot into a mobile contactless payment device.

The result of their collaboration is a "patent-pending protective case that adds mobile contactless capability and works with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G."