Mobile phones have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting, and shopping. Given the rapid pace of developments in the area of mobile finance, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting annual surveys of consumers’ use of mobile financial services in 2011. This 78-page report, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services” (March, 2015) examines trends in the adoption and use of mobile banking, payments, and shopping behavior and how the emergence of mobile financial services affects consumers’ interaction with financial institutions.
HID Gobal Announces New Contactless Payment Stickers
HID Gobal announced today, the addition of a mobile sticker format to its family of contactless payment and identification cards.
HID Global provides solutions for the delivery of secure identity. The new stickers make it easier to add closed-loop payment and loyalty systems to existing automatic fare collection or retail systems, or to augment campus identification systems with new access control capabilities. They also can be affixed to mobile phones as a bridge to coming NFC mobile payment services.
“We continue to offer more ways to deliver secure access and conduct cashless transactions, whether with traditional cards or easy-to-use contactless stickers, and each of our credential form factors plays an important role as consumers seek more reliable and convenient secure identity solutions.”
Unlike other stickers, HID’s sturdy, adhesive-backed stickers include an internal ferrite layer that shields electronics from interference even when attached to items containing metal, such as mobile phones.
They come in a breakout ID-1 card format and can be printed with customer information including serial numbers, activation codes, messages, brand elements and/or promotional text and artwork.
HID Global offers print customization in low quantities, providing companies with an economical way to extend their brand presence. To meet existing customer environments, HID’s contactless payment and identification stickers are available with DESFire, MIFARE and iCLASS technologies.
“Contactless payment stickers enable users to experience the convenience and reliability of next-generation NFC-enabled mobile payment, now, by simply attaching them to mobile phones, MP3 players or other frequently carried items,” said David Nichols, Product Marketing Director, Credentials, with HID Global. “We continue to offer more ways to deliver secure access and conduct cashless transactions, whether with traditional cards or easy-to-use contactless stickers, and each of our credential form factors plays an important role as consumers seek more reliable and convenient secure identity solutions.”
HID Global’s contactless payment and identification stickers are available in both volume and sample quantities. HID’s sticker customization program allows customers to choose from a variety of printing, laser engraving, programming, artwork and contactless chip technology options, upon request. In the field, stickers may be printed with brand elements, custom designs or other information using desktop card printers such as the Fargo line of financial card printers with patented High Definition Printing (HDP™) technology. The single-use part can be discarded by the end-user after receipt.
Source: Business Wire
In Singapore, Trial NFC Mobile Payment Solution for StarHub Subscribers
A select group of StarHub mobile plan subscribers from DBS, a Singapore bank offering services in corporate, SME, consumer and wholesale banking in Asia and the Middle East, will be part of a trial of the company’s NFC Mobile Payment Solution for everyday mobile payments.
The trial, which is expected to last 8 months, is jointly organized by DBS Bank, EZ-Link, Gemalto, MasterCard and StarHub. The service adds an N-Flex solution, which will transform the regular handsets into NFC-enabled mobile phones without any change to the device. Implementable on SIM cards across multiple mobile handsets, the N-Flex solution helps in standardization of the handsets supporting NFC. The solution supports the Single Wire Protocol (SWP), which has been endorsed by the GSM Association.
StarHub is a provider of information, communications and entertainment services to both consumer and corporate markets of Singapore. The company operates a fast two-way HSPA+ mobile network in the country that delivers up to 21Mbps data speed to the customers of its GSM network; and also runs a HFC network for delivering cable TV services such as high-def TV and on-demand services and high-speed residential broadband services to the consumers as well.
via: M2M: StarHub Enables DBS Customers to Use NFC Mobile Payment Solution.
Gemalto Seeks Growth in NFC Market with NXP Partnership
Working toward growing its presence in Near Field Communications (NFC) payment systems, Gemalto has entered into an agreement with NXP Semiconductors N.V., as well as the mobile payments trial in Singapore.
Gemalto’s activities range from the development of software applications through the design and production of secure personal devices such as smart cards, SIMs, e-passports and tokens, to the deployment of managed services for our customers. The company has more than 10,000 employees and 2009 revenues of €1.654 billion.
The agreement with NXP, calls for Gemalto to integrate NXP’s MIFARE technology into its Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), which will expand the mobile contactless payment market because MIFARE is one of the most ubiquitous mobile contactless services and Gemalto’s SIMs are used in a large number of mobile devices.
The agreement enables Gemalto to complement its existing NFC application portfolio with MIFARE DESFire and MIFARE Plus technology for its UICC security solutions. As a result, mobile operators and service providers will be able to offer a broad range of mobile contactless services thanks to the widened availability of UICC cards incorporating MIFARE.
This is the most widespread contactless technology worldwide and provides high levels of performance, flexibility and security in public transportation, access management, event ticketing and customer loyalty programs.
“MIFARE is already at the heart of contactless infrastructures around the world,” said Henri Ardevol,
vice president and general manager, secure transactions, NXP Semiconductors. “We are proud to
collaborate with Gemalto to offer the convenience of this technology to a new target of 5 billion mobile
phone users.”
“Adding the MIFARE capability to Gemalto’s NFC application portfolio is key for the mass deployment of
mobile contactless,” added Rémi de Fouchier, senior vice president, Trusted Services Management,
Gemalto. “We are enthused that more and more consumers around the world will enjoy the simplicity
and convenience of waving their mobile phone for couponing and stored value payment and transport
services.”
Source: RCR Wireless News, Gemalto
Tyfone Receives Patent for Mobile Wallet Technology
Over the next two years, analysts forecast contactless payment transactions via MicroSD technology will be used by more than 20 million people in North America alone, at thousands of contactless payment terminals already in place. According to a Sept. 2009 forecast by Juniper Research, near-field communications (NFC) contactless payment global gross transaction value is expected to exceed $30 billion by 2012.
Tyfone has recently been awarded a patent for its new mobile electronic wallet technology. The technology enables the use of a mobile phone having a memory card slot and a memory card compatible with the memory card slot to transmit transaction data to a reader device. The memory card includes circuitry used to produce a time-varying magnetic field that enables a contactless transaction. The circuitry used to produce a time-varying magnetic field may include smartcard circuitry.
Tyfone, based in Portland, OR and Bangalore, India, is a global provider of unified mobile money and secure transaction infrastructure for mobile banking, mobile identity management, and mobile contactless NFC payments
“Tyfone recognizes the value of this intellectual property and the hard work that it has taken to continue developing innovative solutions, confirmed by this patent issuance. This patent will uniquely enable solutions that will allow consumers to benefit from the convergence of money and mobility,” said Dr. Siva Narendra, chief technology officer at Tyfone. “Our innovations allow financial institutions to provide secure, convenient and holistic solutions, therefore enable a value driven user experience to multiple generations of consumers, whose needs and usage models differ widely. Tyfone’s neutral secure commerce solutions are easily implemented and scalable by financial institutions, merchants, account issuers, or network operators. Ensuring security and a positive consumer experience are our guiding principles.”
“As recent news from major financial, mobility and computing brands demonstrate, all the stakeholders in financial services and commerce are converging on mobile,” said Dr. Narendra. “The NFC and contactless market is heating up now more than ever as handset manufacturers, OS developers, network operators, payment card networks and financial institutions all race to secure a stake in this technology and its direction. Tyfone’s innovations include a secure end-to-end mobile money and transaction platform that also provides neutral contactless NFC solutions.
Unlike software-only technologies that refer to their application as an electronic wallet and are limited in functionality and security, Tyfone’s platform includes the SideTap™ neutral secure element — thereby creating a digital container and functionality, unavailable in software-only solutions, for securely storing content for a true electronic “wallet.” This solution enables any stakeholder to securely manage multiple consumer credit, debit, pre-paid, loyalty, identification, and transportation accounts for use in a wide range of payment and other secure transactions, while maintaining the storage capabilities of existing memory cards that consumers have grown accustomed to.
In the growing contactless payment marketplace, Tyfone’s patents, SideTap memory card product, and u4ia (pronounced euphoria) mobile money and secure transaction platform enable any commerce stakeholder to bring immediate scale by converting most existing handsets to be NFC ready.
Source: Tyfone
Singapore to Develop NFC Mobile Payment System
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore has issued a Call for Collaboration (CFC) to accelerate the proliferation and adoption in Singapore of mobile payment services using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, a secure form of short-range wireless technology built on open standards.
With NFC, consumers can use their phones to make a wide variety of payments, including credit card payments as well as most CEPAS e-payment services using FlashPay and ez-link cards, simply by holding the phone in front of card readers.
The CFC would be awarded by June, 2011, and the target date for commercial rollout of the NFC payment system is February, 2012.
via AsiaOne Business: Get ready to pay with your mobile phone.
London to be First City in Europe with Complete NFC Mobile Payment System
London will be the first city in Europe to have a mass market, NFC-based, mobile payments system, according to Pablo Montesano, Telefonica’s Director of Mobile Financial Services.
Montesano said that the 2012 Olympics would push the introduction of the technology into the London market, making it the first mass market deployment outside of Japan and Korea.
via Mobile Europe – London to lead way in NFC mobile payments.
Google to Integrate NFC in “Gingerbread” Android OS
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has indicated that the coming “Gingerbread” Android release will have integrated Near Field Communication (NFC), which will allow for interaction with hardware devices, and may well lead to a revolution in proximity payment processing via mobile phones, and a new boom of mobile payment startup companies. Schmidt made his comments during the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco earlier today.
Using “tap and pay,” says Schmidt, the theory is that you will be able to walk into stores and do commerce, and eventually replace credit cards.
“Ultimately the technology is personal, secure, and an aggregating technology,” according to Schmidt. Google would expect to partner with payment processors, and the credit card industry believes the losses will be a lot less than with standard credit cards, he added.
View the full interview here:
Mobile Payments: Introduction
Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer, and mobile wallet generally refer to payment services operated under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cash, cheque, or credit cards, a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods.
Although the concept of using non-coin-based currency systems has a long history, it is only recently that the technology to support such systems has become widely available.
In developing countries mobile payment solutions have been deployed as a means of extending financial services to the community known as the “unbanked” or “underbanked,” which is estimated to be as much as 50% of the world’s adult population, according to Financial Access’ 2009 Report “Half the World is Unbanked”. These payment networks are often used for micropayments.
There are four primary models for mobile payments:
- Premium SMS based transactional payments
- Direct Mobile Billing
- Mobile web payments (WAP)
- Contactless NFC (Near Field Communication)
Some mobile payment solutions are also used in developing countries for micropayments.
Source: Wikipedia
ViVOtech
ViVOtech is a leading end-to-end enabler of next-generation NFC mobile payments, loyalty and marketing solutions—including mobile wallet, patented Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning, Trusted Service Manager infrastructure, NFC touch point (smart poster) management, and loyalty/coupon management software; and contactless NFC payment acceptance terminals.
ViVOtech’s software solution not only works with emerging NFC-enabled smartphones, but also with multiple existing mobile handset models including BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, and Nokia with add-on NFC accessories.
ViVOtech products are used by retailers, banks, processors, and mobile network operators all over the globe; the company has shipped more than 780,000 contactless NFC terminals to more than 35 countries.
In 2009, ViVOtech received the Frost and Sullivan North American Smart Cards Product Line Strategy of the Year Award. In 2010, ViVOtech received the 2010 Mobility Award for its NFC mobile ViVOwallet software, Smart Card Alliance Award “Outstanding Smart Card Achievement” (OSCA) Award for Innovation in Payments Technology and the Contactless Intelligence “Monkey” Awards for Competitive Advantage through Technology used by Citi Tap and Pay NFC Pilot.
ViVOtech’s investors include Citi, First Data Corporation, Motorola Ventures, NCR and Nokia Growth Partners.
More information: ViVOtech.
Near Field Communication (NFC)
Near field communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeters (3.9 in) distance.
The technology is a simple extension of the ISO/IEC 14443 proximity-card standard (proximity card, RFID) that combines the interface of a smartcard and a reader into a single device. An NFC device can communicate with both existing ISO/IEC 14443 smartcards and readers, as well as with other NFC devices, and is thereby compatible with existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation and payment. NFC is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is used mostly in paying for purchases made in physical stores or transportation services. A consumer using a special mobile phone equipped with a smartcard waves his/her phone near a reader module. Most transactions do not require authentication, but some require authentication using PIN, before transaction is completed. The payment could be deducted from pre-paid account or charged to mobile or bank account directly.
Mobile payment method via NFC faces significant challenges for wide and fast adoption, while some phone manufacturers and banks are enthusiastic, due to lack of supporting infrastructure, complex ecosystem of stakeholders, and standards.
NFC vendors in Japan are closely related to mass-transit networks, like the Mobile Suica used on the JR East rail network. Osaifu-Keitai system, used for Mobile Suica and many others including Edy and nanaco, has become the de-facto standard method for mobile payments in Japan. Its core technology, Mobile FeliCa IC, is partially owned by Sony, NTT DoCoMo and JR East. Mobile FeliCa utilize Sony’s FeliCa technology, which itself is the de-facto standard for contactless smart cards in the country.
Other NFC vendors mostly in Europe use contactless payment over mobile phones to pay for on- and off-street parking in specially demarcated areas. Parking wardens may enforce the parkings by license plate, transponder tags or barcode stickers. First conceptualized in the 1990s, the technology has seen commercial use in this century in both Scandinavia and Estonia. End users benefit from the convenience of being able to pay for parking from the comfort of their car with their mobile phone, and parking operators are not obliged to invest in either existing or new street-based parking infrastructures. Parking wardens maintain order in these systems by license plate, transponder tags or barcode stickers or they read a digital display with their eyes in the same way as they read a pay and display receipt.
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