Contactless Smart Cards, RFID, Payment, Transit and Security

The technical basics of Near Field Communications

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Understanding why NFC is more than contactless, Bluetooth, or RFID …

Certainly among the hottest of topics in the ID world today is Near Field Communication (NFC), an exciting and relatively new technology. While it has become a household term in most identification-centric circles, a significant gap in understanding of its technical operations and capabilities remains. Ask a number of people to define NFC, and you are likely to get responses like: ‘It’s a way to make payments with your mobile phone’ … ‘It’s contactless but it can go in a other devices’ … ‘Its like Bluetooth but it is in a card.” While each of these descriptions are accurate to a degree, they fail to capture the true understanding of what sets NFC apart from other technologies.

There are 945 words in the rest of this article …

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The European Payments Council (EPC) has published the second edition of its “White Paper on Mobile Payments.”

According to EPC, the white paper focuses on the usage of the mobile payments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and explores how m-payment services can be delivered through cooperation between service providers in the payment industry and players within the mobile ecosystem.

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EMVCo, the EMV standards body owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa, has published a new white paper on its work to securely standardize the deployment of contactless mobile payments.

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MasterCard has posted a brief interview with Ed McLaughlin, the company’s Chief Emerging Payments Officer, concerning Isis, mobile payments, and the future of MasterCard in the field.

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A new survey from Euro Kartensysteme shows that Germans are starting to embrace the idea of contactless and NFC payments.

Out of 1,040 Germans aged 18-59, 43% responded that they would like to make contactless payments if given the opportunity, of which 58% percent would make their payments with a debit card card, 41% with a credit card and 50% with an NFC phone.

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Metro Inc. is partnering with Visa to bring payWave contactless payments to its chain of 600 grocery stores across Ontario and Quebec.

Beginning early next year, shoppers at Metro, Metro Plus, Super C and Food Basics will be able to pay for items with a tap of a contactless Visa credit or debit card against a reader at the point of sale.

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MarketsandMarkets has published a new report predicting that the NFC market will reach over $10 billion by 2016 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38% from 2011 to 2016.

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