Okanagan College in British Columbia has become the third college in Canada to choose SALTO Systems to provide a contactless electronic access control solution. The first building to roll out the system will be the new $28 million Centre for Learning, a jointly funded project between the provincial government and the college. The facility, which is under construction, will add 22 classrooms to the campus and will be used to provide training for a wide variety of careers. 

Visa has launched four new programs designed to deliver payments and services via mobile devices. Two commercial mobile payments programs in Brazil and Korea, along with two mobile offers and transaction notification pilots in the United States now add to more than a dozen pilot and commercial programs enabled by the Visa mobile platform. 

FreedomPay, a payment management company, will begin powering stored value accounts on Precision Dynamics’ RFID-enabled wristbands now used in water parks and resorts for automated admissions, guest identification, cashless point-of-sale, keyless entry and other applications.

FreedomPay’s proprietary cashless solution enables owners to offer their guests the option of paying without cash. That also means quicker lines, streamlined reconciliations and closeouts and reduced cash handling. 

Barclaycard announced it will have issued at least a million contactless cards in the UK by the end of this year. Including its O2 trial, which involves NFC payments, it now has 6,000 terminals that accept contactless payments as well.

What has helped spark this growth are well-known merchants jumping on board with contactless payments. These include Coffee Republic, EAT, The National Trust and Yo! Sushi. In addition, Barclaycard says it will announce other big name retailers in the next few months. Another reason for the growth is the release a year ago of the Barclaycard OnePulse that’s tied to London’s popular Oyster card.

Read more here.  

The mobile wallet may be a full-fledged reality in five years, according to the latest report from UK-based Juniper Research. Its new Mobile Payments Study projects that purchases using NFC-enabled phones coupled with money transfers could total $600 billion globally by 2013.

The report’s author, Howard Wilcox, commented that this growth will be “driven by both the rapid availability of exciting, easy to use services, and the continued growth in mobile subscriber penetration, particularly in developing countries. As well as becoming multifunctional devices for many users, mobiles will become wallets that people won’t leave the home or office without.” 

Seventy-eight percent of participants in London’s near field communication trial said they would use the technology again, according to a Finextra news report. The six-month pilot was run by mobile operator O2 with Transport for London, device manufacturer Nokia, and card issuer Visa and TranSys, the group that runs the Oyster card system.

The conglomerate gave 500 Londoners NFC-enabled devices that could be swiped across Oyster card readers in London Underground stations and in buses. Barclaycard also credited 225 of the 500 phones with $350 worth of non-reloadable funds for making low value contactless payments at retailers, including Books Etc, Chop’d, Coffee Republic, EAT, Krispy Kreme, Threshers and YO! Sushi. 

The Lough Erne Golf Resort in Ireland has gone with a contactless Mifare system to control access to its guest rooms. Ambar Systems Ltd., a SALTO business partner, deployed the SALTO electronic access control system.

The resort will have contactless readers controlling to 85 bedroom doors in the main hotel and the 25 other units fitted to the doors of the external lodges. The system is a combination of online and offline locks.

The luxury resort comprises 120 guest rooms made up of 53 hotel bedrooms, two Deluxe Suites, two Lakeview Suites and two Courtyard Suites and 25 Luxury Lodges. Fourteen of the lodges offer two bedrooms and 11 lodges offer three bedroom accommodation. Other facilities at the resort include a restaurant, bar, library, drawing rooms and a Thai Spa.