Near Field Communications Handsets and Tags, NFC Pilots and Projects

Zenius offers free wave-and-pay demo licenses for mobile phones

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Zenius Solutions, a Silicon Valley-based NFC software company supporting mobile payments and NFC add-ons, has rolled out demo offerings of its first two products–ZeniusMobilePay, which enables NFC-enabled phones to conduct U.S. and EMV contactless credit card wave-and-pay transactions and ZeniusMobilePOS, which equips NFC-enabled mobile phones to read Contactless credit cards.

Both products work with contactless cards from MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover.


John Wiese, CEO of Zenius Solutions, said the day is approaching when all credit cards in a person’s wallet will be on a mobile phone. “At Zenius, we’re working to do just that–for payment, transportation, gift cards, and more.”

ZeniusMobilePay software can interface with multiple mobile wallet applications, and can run on NFC-enabled phones, including those retrofitted with secure element add-ons like stickers, USB sticks, key fobs, and SIM-wrappers.

In addition to cards, ZeniusMobilePOS can also accept transactions from other NFC-enabled solutions, including payments, couponing, ticketing and transport.

“We’re working to put contactless acceptance in the hands of mobile merchants worldwide. In just a short time, a taxi driver in San Francisco, a street vendor in Guatemala, and your local plumber will all be able to accept secure tap-and-go payments on their mobile phones,” said Wiese.

Compared to current mobile merchant options, which demand manual entry of credit card information, ZeniusMobilePOS offers a next-generation solution, a faster and more secure transaction where the card never has to leave the hands of the customer.

Both systems are currently running on Nokia models 6131 and 6212 phones, but can be ported to additional hardware platforms upon request. [end] 

Zenius Solutions has been awarded the the top innovation prize in the

Disruptathon Mobile Enterprise competition for its NFC-based mobile wallet solution.

Hosted by CTIA Enterprise and Applications in San Diego, the Disruptathon was judged by an audience of approximately 200 industry professionals, investors and app developers. Each finalist firm was granted five minutes to explain its technology’s concept, business model, disruptive potential and user experience.

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Sprint Nextel has announced that it will make NFC a standard feature on Long Term Evolution (LTE) smart phones, reports Light Reading Mobile.

Sprint, a launch partner of Google Wallet, told LR Mobile that they will include NFC chips in all LTE smart phones, excluding free phones and low end models, in order to “aggressively promote contactless technology.”

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Apriva, a provider of secure information and wireless transaction solutions, announced that its Apriva Wallet mobile commerce platform is now available to through the company’s nationwide network of merchants.

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Market research firm Deloitte has released its predictions for the telecoms sector in 2012, which include a few caveats regarding NFC payments.

According to Deloitte, many people are still uncomfortable with the idea of paying with their phones due to concerns over security and the battery draining aspects of NFC – a perception service providers are going to have to overcome before widespread adoption can happen.

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Blackpool, a seaside town situated along England’s west coast, has installed a number of Parkeon contactless-enabled parking pay stations.

For the installation, Blackpool Council opted for the Parkeon Strada pay station terminal. This new, solar-powered terminal is equipped with contactless card readers, accepting contactless payment-enabled mobile phones and various wave and pay bank cards.

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KT Corporation, Korea’s largest teleco, is predicting that 20 million NFC-enabled phones will be in the hands of South Koreans by the end of 2012 – accounting for nearly 40% of the country’s total population, according to NFC World.

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