NearFieldCommunications
Latest
Visa gets Bank of America on board for mobile payments trial, starting in New York next month
It didn't take long for Visa to react to the three-headed beast of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon entering the mobile payments arena. The world's foremost payment processing company has just announced that it's about to start a trial of its contactless payment system in partnership with Bank of America. Kicking off in the New York area this September and lasting through the end of the year, the scheme will most likely involve the MicroSD NFC communicator and In2Pay iPhone case that DeviceFidelity has been developing for Visa. No disclosures are being made on the size of this pilot scheme, though we're told that only a "select" group of employees and customers will be getting the mobile payment chips. Don't worry if you miss out on this one, though, as a similar trial is scheduled to begin in October with US Bancorp. That should give you enough time to turn yourself into a high-rolling select customer, right?
Apple hires NFC expert to manage mobile commerce, prepare to pay with your iPhone
Don't look now, but things may be getting real on the pay-with-your-cell-phone front, as Cupertino's hired a man with years of experience in enabling just that to finally get 'er done. According to his LinkedIn profile, Benjamin Vigier is Apple's new Product Manager of Mobile Commerce, immediately following his handiwork on PayPal Mobile, Sprint MyMoneyManager and the iPhone-based Starbucks Card. Before that, he spent two years heading SanDisk's mobile commerce and near-field communication efforts and over a year doing NFC for Bouygues Telecom, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine the futuristic concert tickets depicted in Apple's recent patent applications might become reality before long. Either that, or he'll wind up on a completely unrelated project, only to leave under mysterious circumstances later on.
Visa rolls out its first commercial NFC payment system
Nokia fulfilled its part of the bargain by rolling out its NFC-enabled 6212 cellphone last year, and it looks like Visa is now finally making the phone a good deal more useful -- in Malaysia, at least. That's where the company has launched its first commercial NFC (or Near Field Communications) payment service for point-of-sale transactions, which will let folks simply wave the phone in front of a reader to make a purchase instead of going to the hassle of swiping a card. What's more, it doesn't look like this is simply a limited trial, with 1,800 stores in the country ready to accept the magical payments out of the gate, and Maxis and Maybank on board to let folks easily access their credit account. Better still, Visa has also said that this move finally signals the shift from pilot programs to actual roll-outs, although it's unfortunately not being all that specific about the next few markets on tap just yet.
ETSI finalizes NFC standard
The GSM Association has been rearing to go for a while now with its Pay-Buy Mobile initiative with the ultimate goal of making contactless payment more the norm than the exception, but naturally, the GSMA isn't the only standards body that wants in on the action. ETSI -- the European Telecommunications Standards Institute -- has just decided on the final piece of what will ultimately become Europe's NFC standard. It seems the little matter of communication between the NFC circuitry and the phone's SIM was the holdup, and now that it's settled, the GSMA says it'll "[enable] mobile operators to prepare for the rollout of contactless payment services and other applications that make use of this flexible short-range radio technology." If there's one surefire way to redouble support for a new technology, it's by standardizing it -- now, let's just hope those standards start to cross borders.[Via Phone Scoop]
Cambridge Consultants develop NFC diabetes management device
If near field communication (NFC) is good enough for handling your money, then surely it must be good enough for managing vital health information, no? At least that's what Cambridge Consultants is promising, recently unveiling an NFC-based concept device developed in conjunction with Philips that could potentially be used by people to manage diabetes. The system consists of a wireless glucometer and an insulin pump which interact with each other to determine the proper dose of insulin by simply waving the two devices near each other, working just as well underneath clothing. And while they've focused solely on diabetes thus far, the researchers say near field communications could potentially be applied to a wide range of medicinal applications, including pain relief, asthma and respiratory care, and gastric electrical stimulation therapy, among others.
