Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard’s head of Emerging Payments, has some good news for those waiting on NFC-enabled phones for contactless payments.

In an interview with Fast Company, McLaughlin said that he didn’t know of a handset maker who wasn’t working on integrating support for PayPass contactless payments. 

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the forthcoming Wii U game controller will feature embedded NFC technology.

According to Iwata, the NFC controller will contain the same contactless standards used in FeliCa and Mifare products, enabling it to interact with a variety of different NFC-tagged objects to enrich the gaming experience. 

MasterCard and Commonwealth Bank have announced the launch of a QkR, a new mobile app that enables movie theater goers to browse and purchase refreshments from their seats.

The app (pronounced “quicker”) is now being piloted at Australian cinema chain Hoyts at multiple La Premiere theaters around Sydney. Each La Premiere seat armrest contains an NFC tag and sticker showing a QR code, giving patrons three different ways to turn their cinema seat into a point of sale. A quick scan, tap or type on their Android or iPhone smart phone places your order, which is hand delivered to your seat by La Premiere staff. 

Sequent Software, a California-based provider of mobile NFC software, announced the launch of Core Card Services (CCS), a solution designed to enable any mobile app to seamlessly integrate NFC payments, ticketing, coupons, ID badge access and more.

According to Sequent, CCS consists of on-device middleware and support services that “unlock NFC innovation” for app developers, enabling them to incorporate NFC into existing apps such as mobile banking, loyalty, transit or ticketing. 

Visa made waves in August when it unveiled a road map to move the U.S. to EMV and then again in January when the company said that the country’s deployment wouldn’t be chip and PIN. Stephanie Ericksen, head of Authentication Product Integration at Visa USA, talk to Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan about the move and why the U.S. will have a different solution than what other typically associate with EMV. “One thing that we’re trying to clarify is there are many countries around the world that have adopted EMV chip technology, but it’s not chip and PIN,” Ericksen says.

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LikeBelt from deeplocal on Vimeo.

And now for something completely different.

Pittsburgh-based design studio Deeplocal has developed an NFC-enabled belt that lets the wearer “like” things on Facebook much in the same way that a dog “likes” your leg.

No, this isn’t something out of The Onion. According to Wired, those who don the LikeBelt can interact with NFC chips in the real world by giving them a not-so-discreet hip thrust. The belt, which contains an NFC antenna in the buckle, reads the NFC tag and automatically connects to the wearer’s Facebook profile to “like” the corresponding item. 

CARTES in North America, a new annual card manufacturing, payment, identification and digital security expo and conference, has placed mobile payments at the center of its agenda of this year’s inaugural event.

Held March 5-7, 2012 in Las Vegas, CARTES will focus on determining what combination of technology convergence, business partnerships and consumer acceptance points will drive the widespread adoption of global mobile payments.